A Death Worth Dying
by Girl From Another World
Summary: It had begun with him holding someone's body. It had begun with a flicker in his eyes, a torrent of tears, and a promise that he had vowed to uphold for as long as he should live, but one that had been broken so quickly. It did not build up overtime, but surprised us all with its ferocity. The story of the day that Sally Jackson died and the events that followed that fateful day.
1. Chapter 1 - Part 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters, credits to Rick Riordan.**

 **This one-shot (two parts) describes the day that the legendary Sally Jackson died, as told by Annabeth Chase. When Ares arrives at Camp Half-Blood during a celebration (that Sally had been invited to) and demands a fight with Percy to settle an old grudge. Percy tries to resist Ares' taunts and insults, resulting in Ares throwing his spear at Percy in frustration. But the spear did not hit Percy Jackson. It hit Sally instead, who had jumped in front of her son, saving him, but...well, I'll let Annabeth tell you the rest of the story.**

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Being afraid of their boyfriend is not a sensation that many people experience in their life. And those that do, well they are men and women far braver than myself. Being able to tell yourself that the person you're committed to is no longer the person you fell in love with. Being able to tell yourself that the person you've devoted yourself to isn't devoted to you, and that they prefer harming you than loving you: that's far harder than battling any monster.

I salute you.

Being afraid of Percy Jackson was something that many people experience in at least one moment throughout their life. Some hear stories about the things he's done, the things he can do when he has the incentive. Others have seen him in action, have seen him do the terrible deeds that seem so terrible, when they were in fact the things that kept those that he cared for alive. Percy's made a lot of sacrifices over the years, every single one made for someone who he can't imagine living without, or simply a stranger.

You see Percy's fatal flaw is his loyalty. His infinite faithfulness to those he considers family, and sometimes those that he doesn't. However, I've always thought that it went deeper than that. I mean, endangering your life for your enemies is a lot different to endangering your life for your family, isn't it? Percy risked getting himself killed when he paused to tell a demigod that had turned to Kronos that the Andromeda was about to blow up. He did this despite the fact that the boat was in fact moments away from blowing up, and he himself could die.

It was that day that I realised that maybe Percy's loyalty went deeper than love. Maybe it in fact reflected the opposite. A loathing of himself. A belief that everybody else's life was worth more than his was. What other explanation is there for risking your life for the enemy who had already killed fellow demigods?

I'd only ever seen the Percy that I feared once. The version of my boyfriend who made my heart race and my breathing quicken, for all the wrong reasons. As well as making me clutch my dagger tighter.

When we were in Tartarus. When we had no control over our own fate. I put his actions on that day down to the suffering and terror we'd been succumbed to over those torturous days. I put it to the back of my mind and hadn't brought it out for two years. But here it was now, the brute force of it in my face, mind and heart. And I could do nothing about it.

I watched his hands shake, his shoulders and chest heaving with the pure rage and emotion that made his heart race and his breath come quick. I watched his eyes darken from their usual green to murky black with hints of mud brown in them. The colour of the most foul and dirty rivers. Percy's eyes hadn't been the bright green I had once known them to be since that day, two years ago. But this colour was something I'd only seen once before, and it sent the coldest chill straight through my body. One of his fists was clenched around riptide in a bone breaking grip, while the other grasped and flexed alternately, trying to find a release to the fury that ran through his veins. The air around him whirled up into a storm, not Jason's doing, but his own. The sheer moisture of the Earth was now under his power, and it whipped around him in a watery tornado. The ocean behind him churned up into a dark, very dark grey picture, and waves crashed onto the bay like blocks of concrete. Creating dents in the sand and causing all the seagulls to fly away in a flurry.

It had started off as it had before, with fear and heartbreak. It had begun with him holding someone's body. It had begun with a flicker in his eyes, a torrent of tears, and a promise that he had vowed to uphold for as long as he should live, but one that had been broken so quickly. Only this time it came quicker, it did not build up overtime, but surprised us all with its pure ferocity, and fire.

I watched on helpless as he rose to his feet slowly, letting the lifeless body of Sally Jackson, a woman of untold bravery and inexhaustible love, a woman who didn't deserve to die, not in a thousand lifetimes, fall to the ground. I watched as Percy let his mother's body drop, and I couldn't see any part of _our_ Percy, of _my_ Percy, of _her_ Percy left in his eyes. A different man now stood where he once stood.

He turned to the God of Ares, his eyes completely black, the same colour as the raging ocean behind him. He turned slowly and without remorse. If one man came out of this fight alive, it would not be the immortal one.

Ares looked at the body of Percy's mother like she was simply sleeping. As if she would wake up any moment, and smile in the way that only Sally could. In a way that made you feel infinitely safe.  
He had not meant to kill her, it had been an accident. That was obvious. Mortals were fragile, their bodies frail in the hands of Gods. It was easy for him to do, to kill her without meaning to. But it was an unforgivable act nevertheless.

Percy did not hesitate for a second. The moment he was fully on his feet, the wind and rain churning around him, making it hard for the rest of us to see what was happening, but I was close enough to see the untamed rage in Percy's eyes. The pure and utter heartbreak that he didn't know how to control, so he hid it as fury and anger and did the only thing that his Godly instincts knew how to do.

Fight.

"You killed my mother." He snarled, in a terror inducing voice that I had heard only once before. But it was the voice that haunted my nightmares.

"Look boy, she got in my way! How was I supposed to know that she would jump in front of you while I was trying kill you?" Ares argued, trying to make himself seem innocent in the most disgusting way possible. By blaming Sally. The storm of wind and seawater moved faster across the beach, creating an impenetrable circle around us. I watched as Percy moved towards Ares slowly, each footstep a warning of destruction. The God stood his ground, but his hand tightened around the spear at his side.

"You killed my mother." Percy repeated, ignoring anything Ares said.

"What do you want me to do? Bring her back to life? You know I can't do that!" Ares shouted over the loud rumble of the water and wind. Percy's body flinched at his words, a shock of pain running through him as he was reminded that he no longer had a Mother.

"You. Killed. My. Mother." Percy said once again, only this time slower, punctuating each word tensely. My heart beat quickened as I watched the man I loved turn into a monster, overcome with a pain so strong that even Chiron flinched at Percy's words.

"She's only a mortal! She wouldn't even be worth bringing back to life!" Ares suddenly shouted in frustration, evidently irritated by Percy's slow actions.  
But his words did the job. Percy snapped. His eyes were now completely black, and his face now emotionless except for pure and uncontrolled outrage and hatred. All directed at the God that had killed his Mother.

All the water that had been churning around us was gone, and instead it was drowning the God of War. A ball of water surrounded him, moving in waves as the God thrashed around inside. Technically, he didn't even need oxygen to survive. But the Gods were still weak after the war with Gaia, and being drowned for long enough would put him out of action for a few hundred years.

No one moved to stop Percy, in fact, no one moved to save the God either. Even the children of Ares were frozen where they stood. I looked over to see Clarisse, looking messy and tired, but she was stone faced. She watched the sphere of water as it moved without emotion. No sadness, or fear, or anger. Just stone cold observation.

I turned back to Percy to see he was now controlling the water physically with his hands. They circled each other as he struggled to contain the God. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jason try to take a step forward, to stop Percy before he got himself a punishment worse than death from the Gods.

Instead loops of water pulled his feet into the sand and kept him there. Jason wasn't going anywhere. I watched as Jason took a calculated look at his surroundings, noticing how the sand on the beach was all wet with water. How Percy was the standing on that sand too, and was the most drenched in water of us all. I knew what he planned to do the same moment Jason did. It was a tactic he had learned during a capture the flag game. When the sand was wet, he could send electricity into the ground and shock everyone that was standing on the wet sand. It would render everyone but him unconscious for a couple of seconds.

Jason turned to me, knowing that I would've worked out what he wanted to do. I nodded, approving him to do it. And braced myself for the shock. But it never came, and I looked to Jason for the reason. He sighed and pointed at Percy's feet. The sand that he was now standing on was a bright yellow. Completely and utterly free of water. I wasn't the only one that had noticed what Jason was planning to do. Percy had too.

I racked my brain for ideas. I looked at all of the demigods on the beach, my terrified family who were still willing to fight after everything we'd already been through. I looked at them and tried to think if any of their powers could stop Percy from drowning the God of War. Percy wouldn't be able to hear Piper's charm speak over the sound of the roaring ocean. He could destroy Nico's skeletons in seconds with water. If Leo tried to do _anything_ with his fire, Percy would just put it out with seawater. If Hazel was here, she could use her magic to make Ares disappear, then Percy would have no control over the water. But she was in New Rome with Frank. I sighed inwardly and turned back to Jason. There was only thing we could do. I pointed at the sky, and Jason raised his eyebrows in disbelief. He sent me a look that asked me if I was sure. And I nodded despite everything in my heart telling me not to electrocute my boyfriend.

You see, Jason could control how much he shocked those when he sent it through the ground. But if he sent a lightning bolt from the sky to hit Percy, he had little control over how powerful it would be. It could knock Percy out from an hour to three days.

Jason raised his arms and a look of complete concentration came over his face. I turned back to see that the sphere of water encasing Ares was moving at a slower rate. Ares was running out of energy and we were running out of time.

The sky began to darken in the same way the sea did, and huge grey storm clouds came rumbling over us. I watched as the sun disappeared, and dreaded what was about to come next.

And then the sphere of water dropped from the sky, and Ares fell to the ground spluttering, and desperate for breath, but conscious. Percy's face was a picture of confusion and fury. Frustration overtook his body as he turned around to see what had destroyed his plans to render the God of War useless for the next few years.

And there, standing knee deep in a calm patch of clear water in the shores, was the God of the Sea. Percy's face dropped.

"Enough." Poseidon bellowed. And the sea went still. The air was tense and eerily silent as Percy and his father stared each other down. Jason retracted his clouds and the sky returned to its previous orange as we now noticed the sun was setting.

"He killed her." Percy shouted in fury at his Father. As if announcing this would stop him from coming any further. But he already knew. I could see it in the weary lines of his forehead, and the dull grey of his eyes despite the sea returning to its usual green.

Poseidon began to walk forward, taking slow and long steps, as if every movement pained him.  
"He deserves to die!" Percy screamed in frustration. Tears began to fall down his cheeks, and I wished to step forward and wipe them away. But none of us knew what Percy would do if we attempted to get close to him. He could hurt even his girlfriend without meaning to. "Why did you stop me? I want to kill him." Percy now sobbed, his true emotions slipping through the cracks in his self-control. Poseidon kept walking.

He only stopped when he was inches away from his son. He put one hand on Percy's shoulders as the rose and fell with each of his heavy breaths, and said, "Even you, my son, cannot control the fate of a God." He said quietly, a façade of peacefulness in an attempt to calm his son. Percy's shoulders slumped at his defeat. While tears filled Percy's eyes, I noticed Poseidon nod at the God of War, who was struggling to stand up after what Percy had done to him. Ares looked down, knowing when it was time to call for peace, and vanished in a split-second.

Never before had Percy looked so scared. So young with emotional destruction. My heart broke to see him, and I felt a solitary tear trace a path down my cheek. Percy's shoulders began to shake as sobs took control of his body. Poseidon wrapped his arms around his sons shaking body and embraced him. A sight I had never seen before. Percy tensed up as he felt Poseidon encircle him in a hug, but then fell against him helplessly.

I couldn't bear to watch the man I loved look so powerless. And so instead, I moved towards the broken and empty from of the late Sally Jackson. She lay on her back, one hand near her head, while the other lay on her stomach where she had attempted to stop the bleeding from where Ares' spear had pierced her stomach. It was only now that I recognised where the red stain on Percy's t-shirt had come from. I fell to my knees next to her, and stroked a piece of hair out of her face.

I turned around to look at Nico and Will, silently begging that one of them could do something. They were holding hands, with Nico having stepped in front of Will in the protective stance that I recognised from the many times Percy had done it to me. I knew the burden that fell upon both of their soldiers, one a healer, the other the son of death. Both knew instantaneously if someone was dead, and if they could be saved. They shook their heads sadly in unison.

A sensation I would describe as similar to being choked overcame me. I turned back to the lifeless body in front of me and let the tears fall finally. This woman had cared for me the year that Percy disappeared. We cared for each other in our weakest moments, and she had been more of a mother to me in these past three/four years than my actual mother had been for my twenty years. I grasped her hand that was next to her head, staining her blood onto my own hand, but I didn't care.

She had a new daughter, only two years old. And a husband, Paul. Neither of whom new what had happened. They were enjoying a small vacation together in the South. And tomorrow, when they arrived home, one would find out they were a widow, and the other would discover they were never going to see her mother again. Lucy. Innocent, young Lucy. Who didn't even know what death was. How many nights would she spend crying for her mother now? Until one day she forgets about her completely. And then, when she gets older, she'll ask questions that will strike a thousand daggers through us all.

I thought of Percy, who I couldn't bear to look at, and knew that he hadn't even thought of all these things yet. He was acting upon simple loss. Grievance and pain.

Sally's eyes were still open. Their blue sparkle replaced with a dull, hollow steel colour. Gently, I closed them with the tips of my fingers. She was no longer beautiful. Even Sally Jackson couldn't trump death. Her once rosy skin was an ashy white, and her lips were going grey as the blood moved away from her head. Her chestnut locks were wet and straggly from the seawater, and the grey streaks provided the last bit of cheery colour to her face.

No, she was not beautiful. Death was an ugly, de-humanising process that sucked all of the life out of the body so that you barely recognised them.  
But, Sally was at peace. You could see it in the position of her mouth, a flat line with the edges turned up by the slightest degree. Not a smile, but an expression of peace. A juxtaposition to the grimace of pain her face originally held when Ares struck her with his spear.

I heard footsteps behind me, and turned to see my boyfriend and his father walking towards me. Percy a younger version of his father, but both looked broken, as if there worlds had been sliced in half and stuck back together upside down. They knelt down when they reached us. Poseidon on the other side of sally's body, and Percy next to me, at her head. Poseidon placed his hand on her forehead and muttered a few words in a language I didn't recognise. But the intention of them was clear. A blessing.

Percy's hand found mine, and we gripped each other tightly as if letting go would mean we would both fall apart. Percy didn't say anything, he didn't move or shed a tear, and he just sat there, looking lost. The anger that had controlled him earlier was now gone, replaced with something you could only describe as looking unconscious while being awake.

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 **Go onto next chapter for part 2.**


	2. Chapter 1 - Part 2

We sat there in silence for five minutes. Behind me I could hear the trudging footsteps of demigods walking back to camp. They all walked in silence, walking off one by one when they felt the moment was right. I knew that Chiron would still be behind us, along with Jason, Piper, Leo, Will and Nico.

It was Poseidon who broke the deafening silence, he stood up, scooping Sally's limp body up easily in his arms.

"A shroud will be needed." I heard him say to Chiron, his low voice breaking.

"No." I tried to say, knowing that I was probably the only one here that knew of Sally's wishes. We had been together after all when we both wrote our wills.  
"No." I repeated, louder this time, and Poseidon stopped walking. He turned around, and looked at me questioningly.

"She wanted to be buried. It's all in her will." I said in a hollow voice. Poseidon gave me a nod, and carried on walking back towards the centre of camp, where I knew they'd either put Sally in the infirmary or the Big House. I turned back around to find Percy still kneeling next to me, with the same forsaken expression on his face. But his hand was still holding mine tightly.

Jason POV

"Let's go." Piper whispered, tugging on my hand. Her face was fresh with tears and her eyes bloodshot. But my eyes were trained on Percy and Annabeth.  
"Jason." Piper, whispered, trying to get my attention. But my brain was in other places. Mainly on the fact that I'd just seen my best friend nearly 'kill' a God. Now I knew why he was offered immortality.

"Do you think it's safe to leave them?" I murmured to my girlfriend. She looked at me curiously.  
"What?" She hissed.  
"You saw how angry he was a minute ago. What if he goes back to that? Annabeth would be helpless against him in that state." I explained in a whisper low enough that the couple in front of us couldn't hear me. Piper considered this for a moment.  
"No," She decided. "He won't go back. I can feel it rolling off of him. Pure and utter heartbreak, not anger. It's all out of his system now." I looked at them in front of us, holding hands, and looking the same as they did the day we arrived in Camp Jupiter, and they saw each other for the first time since spending a year apart.  
"Jason, she's safe with him. Annabeth's the only thing he needs right now. He couldn't hurt her if he tried." She murmured comfortingly. I nodded in agreement, and we turned away from the beach, and walked back to our home.

Annabeth POV

We sat there in silence for the next five minutes, staring out at the calm ocean in the orange glare of the sunset. It looked so serene, a picture perfect view. I knew the ocean calmed him, so I let us sit in the moment for a while. But eventually I felt him stiffen up, and I knew that he was fighting off emotions.

"It's okay to be angry Percy." I said, breaking the silence. He didn't look at me, so I continued. "It's okay to be angry, to want to scream and shout and cry. It's okay to be heartbroken. It's okay to grieve." He was silent for a couple of seconds, but I could see him debilitating what I had said.

"I don't know what to do." He said, his voice hoarse from his screaming, and his voice so low I could basically feel the weariness rolling off of him. But still he stared out at the ocean, ignoring my pleading looks to him.  
"You don't have to do anything." I whispered, and finally he turned so that he was looking at me. For the first time I saw him properly. His eyes were bloodshot and a murky green. His face was streaky and splotchy from his tears, and his hair was sticking up everywhere from the wind he had churned up around him. Hesitantly, I placed a shaky hand on his cheek, and he leaned into it gratefully. Then he was leaning against me and I was cradling his body against my own. His face was buried into my shoulder, and I stroked his hair with my hand. We sat like that for at least ten minutes, simply relishing each other's company.  
"I wanted to kill him." Percy finally mumbled, sitting back up, but remained holding my hands. I let my thumb brush across his knuckles soothingly.  
"But you didn't." I whispered, attempting to stop his worrying. He needed to grieve, not focus on Ares.  
"Because my Dad stopped me." He argued, his voice getting louder. "Without him, I honestly think I would have killed Ares." I was silent for a couple of seconds. We both knew that it was very possible that Percy might actually have killed Ares.

"But you didn't." I finally said. "And there's no point focusing on what could have happened to him. Because what could have happened _didn't._ And therefore it's irrelevant." Percy was silent in response to my words. Mostly because he knew I was right. He knew I was right because he had said those exact words to me a year before. During the war with Gaia, on one of those nights on the Argo II when we had been attacked by countless storm monsters and the like. I had gotten distracted from my assigned job (protecting the statue of Hera) when one of the monsters mimicked Hazel's scream, and I went running to find her. Luckily Nico found the monsters just as they were about to destroy the bottom of our boat freeing the statue, and he killed them. I had spent the remainder of that night awake, peering over the front of the stern as I felt sorry for myself. Percy found me there in the early hours of the morning, and told me off for kicking myself. He said those exact words to me that I said to him now.

"He deserved to die." Percy snarled, breaking me out of my déjà vu. I narrowed my eyes at him and said, "Maybe he did. But you heard your Dad. That's not for us to decide."

"Why not?" Percy exploded, throwing his hands in the air in exasperation. "We have done everything for the Gods, for our _parents_ for thousands of years! And we never get anything in return. It's that sort of treatment that caused the war with Kronos, and if there not careful, it will happen again…." He trailed off, staring out at the ocean distractedly. I knew he was thinking of four years ago, when we were younger, less scarred and more ignorant to the workings of the world. But not as ignorant as our immortal parents were to our failing loyalty to them. It created a giant rift between the mortal and immortal sides, one that we know will never be fully repaired. For how can someone that knows they will someday die have complete trust in a person who has been watching their children die for thousands of years? It's hard to feel love when you're one in a million others.

"You know that that's something that can never happen. Equality cannot be achieved when one side created the other." I stated quietly, ashamed at the truth of my words.  
"They don't deserve the powers they were given. They're ungrateful, power-hungry, self-absorbed twats who don't know-"  
"Be careful what you say Percy!" I cut in as the sky around us began to rumble at Zeus' own intervention. "You're distracting yourself from what happened with your anger. And last time you did that you nearly killed the God of War." Percy looked down at the sand in shame, and I felt a dagger enter my heart seeing what I had to do to calm him down.

"It hurts so much." He finally whispered after a moment of silence. I took one of his hands in mine and stroked it with my thumb. I had no words to reply with, having not experienced a death as significant as the one Percy was now experiencing. And yes, it hurt for me too. Like a red hot knife was being dragged up and down my body, leaving scar after scar after scar.  
But this was Percy's mother. The person who had raised him, and loved him, and sung him to sleep, and kept him safe from his Stepfather, bearing the hits and abuse to keep them in a home. I tried to imagine what it would be like living and knowing that my Father, the man who single-handedly raised me, was no longer on this world. It wasn't something that I could fathom.

"Lucy, and Paul…." Percy whispered. He'd realised what this meant on the whole. One frantic glance at my face told him that I'd already thought of it. He buried his face in his hands, and I knew that he was thinking of Lucy growing up without a mother. The same way that he'd grown up without a Father.

"Percy. I will be with you every step of the way. We all will." I told him soothingly. "You just have to take it one step at a time. And eventually, you'll reach the end and realise that there's no more pain. Only memories." He lifted his head up and looked at me.  
"She's so young." He said in a broken whisper. I nodded and leaned forward so that my head was resting on his shoulder.  
"I know. But she's like you. Like her Mum. She's a survivor. She'll come out of anything, scarred and maybe a little bit damaged, but she'll come out alive and thriving." I told him encouragingly. "The majority of us here spent our whole lives living with only one parent. She can learn to too."

"Why did she have to jump in front of me?" Percy moaned in agony suddenly. "That spear was meant for me. She's never done anything wrong in her life, how could she have thought that she was more worthy of living than I am? I deserved to die. Not her." I grabbed a hold of his face and made him look me in the eyes.

"Percy Jackson, I never want to hear you talking like that again." I hissed, my face inches from his. "You are not allowed to think that your life is less important than anyone else's. You are the most compassionate, loyal, self-giving person I have ever met. You do not deserve to die." I saw recognition in his eyes, but he still didn't believe me fully. I suppose a small part of Percy will never come to terms with who he is and what he's done. After all, he did nearly 'kill' a God today.

"But she didn't deserve to die. She shouldn't have died." Percy whispered, torture filling his voice. I rested my hands on either sides of his face gently.  
"No she didn't." I told him softly. "But that doesn't mean she died in vain." Percy looked at me curiously, as if I was speaking in Italian.  
"She spent her whole life protecting you Percy. Keeping you in a home, happy and healthy. It's only fitting that she died protecting you as well. It's how she would have wanted it." I said softly, attempting to reason with him. Slowly, I saw him begin to understand what I meant. She may not have deserved to die, but that doesn't make her death futile. She died to save her son, making her death more meaningful than we can ever imagine.

He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my forehead. I closed my eyes and let the moment hold me. Just me, him, the ocean and the sand.

We stayed like that for five minutes, until the sky went navy and we both realised that it was time for us to return to Camp.

"Percy…." I began, sitting up to get us moving.  
"I know." He said, except he didn't move.

"You'll be there?" He asked, finally turning round after me waiting patiently for him to come to terms with what he had to do.  
"Every step of the way." I promised, taking his hand in mine.

Together, we walked back to Camp. Back to our home to face angels and demons alike. But we would face it all together. We would come out of every new adventure a little bit more scarred, but alive.  
Alive together.

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 **What did you think? Let me know in a review if it's worth making this into a full story. Because I will if you guys think it's good enough.**


	3. Author's note - Apology

Apology

So I recently got a comment that said "It's actually very common for girls to be afraid of their boyfriends sadly." From a guest. It made me reassess what I had written to begin my story, and I have now changed it to be more respectful and less ignorant towards those who have experienced abusive relationships. I hope that the rest of my story has not been judged on my lapse of awareness.  
I apologise for my ignorant words, and hope that my readers forgive me.

\- Girl From Another World


	4. Chapter 2

So, after a lot of deliberation and stressing, I decided to continue this story. Mostly because I love the way I can play around with the chemistry of our all time favourite couple, but also because the comments on this were so uplifting and made me feel that it was worth continuing. So, without further ado - I give you the second chapter of 'A Death Worth Dying'.

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Percy POV

My eyes crept open, a sash of golden sunlight blinding me temporarily. When my eyes adjusted to the intrusion, the blurry sight of my girlfriend sleeping next to me slowly began to come into focus. Her face, as it always was in sleep, was slightly scrunched up, the small crease that she gets between her eyebrows when she's thinking appearing; the result of the repetitive dark memories haunting her dreams. I knew the feeling all too well. Her similarly blonde bordering gold hair lay spread out on the pillow, tangled and messy from the tossing and turning it had endured throughout the night.

Mourning was different to what everyone said I'd found. I didn't wake up every morning and have the sudden realisation of everything that had happened come crashing down on me. Instead the knowledge that my Mum had died was permanent. It _never_ went away. And sleep provided no relief, because my nightmares were filled with the sound of the spear hitting her, the expression of pain on her face, the weight of her petite body in my arms, the feel of her blood on my hands. And the _anger_ , it was inescapable in my dreams. At night I relived her death, every moment and emotion went raging through my body, like a dvd player that never stopped, only I was the film, and bloody messed up one at that. I felt the overwhelming anger of that night, I felt it coursing through my veins, and the power it supplied me with, the power to kill. During the day, the guilt and the loss filled my time. People pitied me, their looks a mixture of pity and fear. I trained harder than I ever had, spending hours hacking at the dummies furiously in the arena. No one came to train in there anymore, too scared I would start hacking at them as well. I went through about two dummies a day, but no one said anything about it, and new ones appeared there everyday.

I suppose I hoped it would be a distraction, that the pain and tiredness from the exercise would divert my attention from my grief. Maybe I hoped that I would become a better demigod, a better fighter, so that no one would ever have to sacrifice themselves for me ever again. Instead I ended up in more pain than I started with. The ache in my joints and bruises permanent, as permanent as my emotional pain. And I was so tired and wrecked when I went to bed at night that my nightmares grew worse, and I'd often wake up _screaming_ for my Mum or Annabeth. I was either watching the dead body of my Mother, unable to bring her back to life; or I was staring down at Annabeth, who was hanging onto my hand desperately, hanging over the pits of Tartarus, forever unable to pull her back up.

I was a wreck. And everyone knew it.

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Annabeth POV

It had been a month. One month since the death of Sally Jackson, and everybody was beginning to move forward. The morbid and despondent air that had captured Camp Half-blood for the past week was beginning to clear up. The atmosphere reminded me of the aftermath of the war with Gaia. A dazed time, where nobody really knew what to do with themselves, and it took a lengthy amount of time for us to organize ourselves and come back to life. There was a lot of mourning to do, a lot of shrouds to be burnt, a lot of injuries to be tended to. But most of all, everyone simply needed peace. We needed time to mourn and remember and move on. And the Gods gave it to us.

And this now was like then in some ways. The unnerved and dazed atmosphere remained. No one really knew what had happened. One moment we were having celebrating, and the next Percy's mother had been pierced with Ares' spear. But it was completely different in other ways. One: few of us at camp actually knew Sally, so although the demigods could sympathise for us that loved her, they couldn't really mourn. It left half of the Camp tiptoeing around the other half. Secondly: There was a lot more admin and logistics to sort out than after the war with Gaia. When we fought Mother Earth, everyone who died was a demigod. We were prepared for their deaths, we had shrouds prepared and a routine that had been performed for hundreds of years.

But a mortal dying in the protection of Camp Half-Blood? That hadn't happened in a long time. It was not an eventuality we were prepared for. And even though we knew she wanted to be buried, we had to sort it out with Paul, and he and Lucy had to say goodbye as well. But they could only be allowed in with the God's permission, something they were unwilling to allow, despite Poseidon's insistence. So then her body had to be moved to a mortal morgue, and the undertaker had to be convinced that she died in a car accident where a spike of metal pierced her abdomen (which took an unbelievable amount of Hazel's magic).

And all of this had to be done without Percy.

I had seen Percy mourn before. We had mourned together for Luke, and all the other demigods who had died over the years. We had mourned for Silena and Beckendorf and Bob and Bianca and Damasen and (for a time) Leo. We had helped each other through it all.

But this was different. This time there was no helping him through it, because he didn't seem to want to get through it.

I'd let him wallow in his grief for a month, accepting that he needed time to process what had happened. But I had expected him to start healing by now, to start to learn how to live without his mother. After all, millions of people around the world did it everyday, at least seventy five percent of the demigods had endured a death of some sort, family or friend. But for some reason it was different with Percy. It was like he believed there was no future for him without her.

Maybe it was the pressure of healing with everyone watching him, everyone expecting him to get better and go back to being the leader he had been before. Maybe it was the guilt he felt for letting her jump in front of the spear that was meant for him. I'd held him enough times while he sobbed that it should have been him that died and not her, to know that he felt more guilt than any demigod in this camp felt. probably more than Chiron would see for a while in future demigods.

Whatever reason it was, it was preventing him from mourning to _heal_ , instead of mourning out of grief. And I was determined to get him over it.

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Percy POV

For the second time today, the dull thud of the straw filled ummy hitting the floor as I cut it in half filled my ears. Although I knew it wasn't echoing around the arena, for it was only straw, the sound bounced around in my head like a ripple effect. I shook it out, and stooped down to drag the straw carcass over to the edge of the arena, where I knew the cleaning harpies would pick it up later.

Fifteen minutes later I was standing motionless under the cold shower, the ache in my limbs too powerful for me to be bothered to move them. My head was throbbing with yet another sleep-deprived and overworked headache., and so I let myself just stand under the water, hoping that it would consume me.

Water no longer gave me the energy and power that it used to. And I couldn't remember the last time I went swimming, or controlled any water. I no longer felt like a son of Poseidon, I was merely another unclaimed demigod who had a particular skill for sword-fighting. I heard the click of my cabin door open and shut, and the light footsteps of Annabeth fill the room. Quickly, I managed to find the effort to finish washing myself, and dragged myself out of the shower. Wrapping a towel around my waist, I opened the door and stepped out of my bathroom. Annabeth was lying on my bed like she always was at this time, having just finished teaching Greek and ancient history to the more advanced students of camp half-blood, she was always mentally exhausted. Her eyes were closed, but they sprang open the moment she heard my footsteps on the wooden floor. We didn't say anything to each other, but her eyes tracked me as I grabbed a pair of shorts and underwear from my drawers. I quickly pulled them on, before methodically and slowly hanging up my towel in the bathroom. I knew what she was thinking, why she studied me every other day when I came out of the bathroom. I had lost a lot of weight. Sure, it had been replaced by muscle, but I hadn't lost it healthily. I ate rarely and discordantly, never at proper meal times, often in the middle of the night, or between lunch and dinner, when everyone else was off doing their daily activities.

Like every other day, I went to the bed and lay down next to her. I maneuvered myself so that my head was lying on her stomach, and my arms draped around her hips. Her hands immediately went to my still dripping wet hair. Already, it was creating a wet patch on her shirt, but she never minded. Her fingers stroked out individual parts of my hair, methodically sectioning it and letting the water droplets fall onto her fingers.

She told me about her day, listing and describing every single thing that happened to her. Mostly to fill the silence, because she knew that I had nothing new to tell her, but also partly because she knew that the sound of her voice was soothing to me. An anchor in the storm of violent sounds that filled me during the day and haunted me at night. I could see the sun setting through the window, but not yet late enough for it to be socially acceptable for me to go to sleep yet.

"They're doing a campfire tonight." Annabeth said quickly after a brief pause in her narration. "Wanna go?" She'd never asked that before. Before my Mum died we always went, without hesitation or interruption, it was just another part in our schedules. Now…...I couldn't imagine going. Sitting down with everyone else, feeling their sympathetic and confused stares on my back, attempting to sing the ridiculously upbeat songs when what I felt was the complete opposite.

"We can sit at the back, last row. No one will have to now we're there, we won't have to sing or do anything, we can leave early, or arrive later. We can just _be_ there." She rattled off, her voice half pleading with me. I thought of the heat of the fire against my face, even six rows back you could feel it, the united out of tune singing of two hundred demigods, the few good singers ruined by the overwhelming sound of a thousand dying cats. It felt like everything I'd been missing, another part of my home I'd abandoned for the past month.

"You go ahead, maybe I'll come later." I murmured, knowing that I wouldn't go. She nodded silently.

She knew that I probably wouldn't go, but she couldn't help but hope. Me, I didn't know why I was so opposed to going. I could sit in the back with annabeth and no one would know we were there, I wouldn't have to sing or do any actions to songs, I could simply sit and relish in the warmth of my family. And yet, there was something stopping me from going.

An hour later, Annabeth had left for the campfire, and I was lying in bed, under the covers, attempting to fall asleep with my eyes open. I was too tired to close them, and instead stuck to hoping that my tiredness would take over me.

It didn't. So instead I got up, got dressed, and trudged outside. i didn't know where my legs were taking me, I just knew that it was away from the pressure of falling asleep. Instinctively, I began to walk towards the beach. When I realised where I was going, I stopped, and turned around, heading back in the opposite direction. Eventually, I reached the circle of chains again, and the dim sound of singing filled my ears. It triggered hundreds of memories: evenings spent around the fire, toasting marshmallows and chestnuts, singing, laughing, late nights ending with Annabeth and I lying on the beach, stargazing broken up by fits of laughter. I began to walk towards the sound, soon finding myself a few metres away from the campfire circle. I was standing right at the back, in the shadows of the trees no one could see me. I spotted Annabeth immediately, her blonde hair glowing in the orange light of the fire. Initially, she was alone, but after five minutes (and a campfire song about how many rubber ducks Jason and his Argonauts owned) Piper and Jason moved to sit with her, one either side of her. Immediately she relaxed, as if there presence was holding her up. I saw her take Piper's hand, while she leant her head on Jason's shoulder. Her eyes screwed up, like she was holding back tears.

A pain greater than any ache or bruise I got form training struck my heart. _This_ was what i was doing to Annabeth, I was draining the life out of her like it was going to save me, and she was willingly giving it to me, because she thought it could.

I turned away, unable to see the woman I loved look as broken as I was.

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What did you think? Please continue to leave comments, they're what inspire me and encourage me to keep writing.

However, I have to tell you that I'm currently heading towards exam season (GCSEs), so updating will be discordant and there is no schedule. I _will_ continue this story, it'll just be a long time coming until my exams are over.

Look out for the next update!


	5. Chapter 3

**Well, I'm back! This chapter is going to stat off dreadfully depressing, but stick around and you might find a bit of light at the end of the tunnel for our favourite couple! Read on...and I hope you enjoy it!**

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Percy POV

Another week passed. Another tense week of training and physically exhausting myself fighting a straw dummy. Clarisse offered to be my sparring partner one day. She seemed unafraid to speak to me, ever the confident and outgoing leader we all knew. But in her eyes I could see the pity and lament; I shook my head when she offered, and she nodded acceptingly, a slight look of relief on her face. If it wasn't for the familiar look of hidden sympathy she held for me, I may have taken her up on her offer. After all, having an actual person to fight against was so much better than fighting against hay. But that look, the same look I'd seen _everywhere_ since that day; there was no escaping it. It was the exact opposite of what I felt I needed.

I craved normal. Average everyday happenings that made up my crazy but familiar life. _That_ would help me heal. But does that mean I was asking everyone to act as if my Mum had never died? Was I asking them to not grieve? Was I asking myself not to grieve? I didn't know. All I knew was that I wanted to go back to how everything was before my Mum died.

I knew Annabeth craved normal as well. Every evening she asked if I wanted to go to the campfire, putting on an _I don't mind if you come or not_ voice, but it was obvious it was what she wanted most. And every night she went off to the campfire, and every night I lay in bed failing to force myself to sleep, until I got bored and got up to go for a walk. I would get drawn in by the sound of the singing, and would watch as Jason and Piper moved to sit next to Annabeth as they realised I wasn't coming once again. She would let them hold her up, blinking back the tears of disappointment, and I would wander back to my Cabin before she came back, pretending to be asleep for both of our sakes.

Annabeth slept in my Cabin now, she had since the war. After spending such a long time apart, and then enduring traumatic events that left us scarred, we found the nights were easier when we were side by side. We spent one night alone in our separate cabins after the war. That night was enough for us to understand how much we needed each other.

Annabeth has moved into my cabin officially after two years. the transition was hard for her: it meant she could no longer be head counselor of Athena cabin, she would see her siblings less. It was also the first time something like this had happened in a long time, demigods surviving into their adult years, old enough to be part of committed couples, and old enough to move in with each other. It was a big step for Camp Half-Blood, as well as a triumph. We were moving forward.

I went to see Paul and Lucy on the Sunday, I'd been spending more and more time there since we lost Mum, visiting two maybe three times a week. they were doing okay, better than I was. Lucy still screamed for her Mama whenever she had a nightmare, but she was gradually realising that Mum was gone, and no longer asked where she was, or when she was coming back. Paul was doing better, the first week was the hardest for him, having to do everything my Mum usually did while dealing with the loss. But he was getting used to it, and I'd only walked in on him crying at the kitchen table once in the past two weeks, which was an improvement.

I knew he worried about me, feared I was depressed. Maybe I was, but being with them helped me. They were my family, my blood family, and Lucy was a bright ball of light in my darkest days. She actually made me smile, something even Annabeth struggled to do, and I was content to go along with whatever game she was playing when I arrived.

When I'd succeeded in sending Lucy to sleep with my 'pretty water shows', as she called them (basically just me controlling water to form different animals, like unicorns or rabbits, currently she was into alligators), I went and sat down in the kitchen with Paul. He was cooking, as he often was nowadays. He claimed it was his coping method, I thought it was simply a distraction. The smell of my Mum's favourite recipe wafted towards me, and I breathed it in eagerly. It hurt to be around something that was _her's_ , it was so easy to imagine her there, cooking after a long day, but humming along to the radio because she was home and I was home and she had Lucy and Paul and everything was good. The smell of the food made my eyes water, fresh memories springing to mind. It was breakfast hash; her favourite comfort food. As the name suggests, it's meant for breakfast, but we found it was too delicious not to eat for dinner. You could make it in a lot of different ways, but our favourite was bacon, egg, potato and cheese. You basically just chop the potato and bacon up small, fry it, crack the eggs in and scramble them, and dump a heap of cheese on top.

It was the only food that was in my top ten list that wasn't blue.

Originally, my Mum found it in a holiday magazine when we went to the beach one summer. It was meant for campers, but we decided that it would make the perfect meal that would cook on the beach on our little camping stove. And it was. Ever since then, we've cooked it at least once every two weeks.

"I think we all need a bit of comfort food right now." Paul said, interrupting my thought process. He dished up two plates of hash, and brought them over to the table. I dug in immediately, not pausing to respond to him.  
"How's Camp?" Paul asked, eating his hash slowly, while I stuffed my face. He always asked this, I suppose he hoped that one day he'd get an answer that consisted of more than just 'okay'.  
"It's okay." I murmured non-committedly. He nodded slowly, pretending that my answer was acceptable.  
"How's Annabeth?" He asked. I froze. He always asked this question, only today was the first time that I realised that Annabeth wasn't as fine as I thought she was. Paul noticed me pause, and leaned forward in concern.  
"She struggling?" He suggested quietly. She was more than struggling, but it was easier just to nod rather than explain that it was my fault she was struggling. "That's only natural, in these last few years Sally was just as much a mother to Annabeth as she was to you." My shoulders hunched forward, and my head dropped. I hadn't considered that. My Mum and Annabeth had gotten close when I disappeared, bonded over their shared loss of me. Then Annabeth disappeared too from my Mum, and she had to deal with that as well. When we came back, we both spent the first week at her and Paul's flat, and Annabeth came with me every Sunday to visit.

"I think I made it worse though." I admitted suddenly, my own emotions surprising me by taking control of my voice. paul leaned back in his chair, pushing his hands through his hair as he thought, before he asked, "How so?"

"She's been trying to help me through all of this, devoted all her free time to _me_ , and I've just shoved her efforts to the side, as if they were just consolitary flowers from another stranger. And I've continued to let her keep trying, to keep attempting to help me, and each time I've just ignored her, or let her believe her efforts don't count." I rambled, the word vomit taking over my body. My voice increased in pitch and volume as I went on, until I was almost shouting. it was the most passionate I'd been about anything since that day. Paul shushed me, reminding me that Lucy was asleep just next door. I continued in a softer, more downcast voice.  
"But I _do_ love her, I love her with everything I have. I just don't know how to do the things she thinks will help me. They're too….foreign. Even the most familiar tasks, the things I've been doing since I arrived at camp seem different. They haven't changed, I think I've changed. But I'm taking it out on Annabeth, and that's not fair in any way. And I don't want to do disappoint or hurt her. Gods I want to make her the happiest person on Earth, but how can I help her when I don't know how to help myself?"

Paul considered my confused self smile, as if my show of emotion, despite it being frustration and confusion and heartbreak was a sign that I was still alive and that I was healing. I wasn't so sure.

"I don't think you need to be worrying about helping yourself. We're all still mourning, Annabeth and me included. But Annabeth…..if you lose Annabeth I don't think you'll be able to recover." He said simply. I tried to imagine no Annabeth in my life, waking up alone, without the reassuring sight of her tangled hair in my eyes. I tried to imagine going to bed alone, having no one to hold me on the days when the images just wouldn't _go away_. I imagined the remnants of Annabeth in my life, finding her hair bands in my cabin, or a lost book on Ancient Greek history under my bed. The little things that made Annabeth _my_ Annabeth, not the teacher or leader everyone else knew.

I blinked back tears, looking down at my lap to hide my bloodshot eyes.

"Just do what she asks." Paul suggested softly, reaching across the table and gripping my arm. "Annabeth is what you need to heal. She will heal you. And I think you'll find you'll heal her."

We sat in silence, both picking at the cold remains of our hash for a while.

"Maybe you should go away." Paul suddenly suggested, his voice bright and and his eyes wide. He sounded the same as when Annabeth got an idea, a revelation in the middle of being stuck doing a maths problem.  
"Go away?" I asked confusedly, wondering what on Earth he was on about.  
"I mean go on holiday for awhile. A change of scenery could be exactly what you need to learn how to live again." He explained, I could see the cogs in his head whirring as he planned our holiday for us.  
"I don't know. I thought familiar and normal was what we needed, I thought it was meant to be comforting. And what if Annabeth doesn't want to?" I suggested, panicking with ideas. Paul raised an eyebrow at me.  
"You think if you suggest going on holiday, you're stressed and overworked girlfriend who's never been on holiday with you before is going to say no?" He asked, giving me a look that told me he thought I was being ridiculous. I shrugged, and Paul shook his head at me. "Secondly, you've been at Camp for a month now, and it hasn't done a thing to help you. If anything, I think it's made everything worse; it's a constant reminder of what happened. Going away could make it easier to move on without the distraction of constantly being around the same people who both pity and fear you."

I considered his suggestion. Going away sounded nice, being in a place where people didn't know me, didn't know my history, didn't know that I was struggling. I could heal without the pressure of _having to_ heal.

But camp was my home, maybe I just needed to stay there for a bit longer before I started to heal? Maybe I just needed to throw myself into camp life more, and that would remind me who I was, what I'd trained to be.

But then there was Annabeth, she was my responsibility. Not in an _I own her sort of_ way, anyone who knew Annabeth would know that she owned herself. But in an _I love her and if anything happened to her that was my fault, then that would kill me_ sort of way. If we stayed at camp half blood, and it only resulted in her destroying herself to try and keep me alive more, then _that_ would kill me.

I never told Paul what I was going to do, instead I told him I would think about, and left quietly, the time alone in the cab and the solitary walk through the woods and barrier gave me time to deliberate. Still, I came up with no definite answer. It was half eleven when I got back, and I walked into my cabin to find that Annabeth sleeping alone in my bed. She was lying face down, her laptop open beside her, and pillow lines had already began to form on her face. Even now, in sleep, the dark circles beneath her eyes were prominent, just another reminder that Annabeth wasn't doing so well either. I closed the laptop, placing it onto the bedside table silently, pulling my t-shirt and trousers off, I quickly climbed into bed next to her, pulling her back against my front, knowing we both needed the comfort. It was gentle spooning position, and her small hand quickly found mine from the arm I was using to cuddle her body.

"Hey." She murmured sleepily, snuggling her head against the crook of my neck.  
"Hey." I whispered back. I felt so safe with her, normal even. As if our lives weren't crazy hectic in a psychological way.  
"How are Paul and Lucy doing?" She mumbled, always concerned for other people, even in her sleepiest moments.  
"Better, Lucy's beginning to understand what's happened, and Paul's learning to cope." I explained briefly, too tired to go into the details. Her soft blonde hair brushed against my face, and I breathed in the familiar scent of her coconut shampoo.  
"I'll come with you next time you visit." She suggested, the softness of her voice showing how tired she was. I pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and let out a small noise of agreement.

The next day, I woke up feeling suppressed and buried as I always did, smothered by the emotions coursing through my body. I got up, finding my arms empty, as Annabeth had already left to start the lessons of the day. I got washed, dressed, grabbed a piece of toast to go at the pavillion, where only two people were eating their separate breakfasts sullenly, looking tired and reluctant to be outside in the glaring sun. Neither of them looked at me. I trained all day, letting the infinite amount of anger I seemed to be storing up for the Winter out of my body, knowing that tomorrow it would all be back. I didn't eat lunch, instead allowing my body to use up all the leftover energy it had in it from the substantial meal Paul had fed me the night before. By six thirty, I called it quits, knowing that I would pass out if I trained for any longer. I'd gone through three dummies that day, all hacked to shreds by Riptide.

I showered back in my cabin, with Annabeth coming in ten minutes later, to find me lying on my bed, face up, with my hands clasped against my stomach, and my eyes looking up nonchalantly at the ceiling. As always, I was doing nothing. Once again, she suggested going to the campfire together, and once again I told her to go ahead, and that I'd join her later if I felt up to it. It was painful for both of us to hear the lies leave my mouth, but we shrugged it off, like we had with everything else that had came our way that past month.

Annabeth left silently, tiredly acknowledging that I wouldn't be going to the campfire like always, and when it turned dark outside and the familiar sounds of a hundred tone-deaf demigods signing filled my ears, I left the cabin to go for a walk. And once again, like always, I was drawn right back to where I belonged, to the heap of demigods crowded around a blazing fire in rows of laughter. The normal flickering orange and red colours of the fire were purple and blue today thanks to the children of Hecate; they cast unusual but radiant shadows into the crowds, making the suntanned faces of my once-friends glow and shine under the moonlight. I spotted Jason and Annabeth, their heads close together as they whispered hurriedly, they looked only a bit more alive than Annabeth. Obviously my absence from camp life was taking its toll on them too.

My eyes automatically found Annabeth, in the shadows of the forest from where I looked upon everyone, it was hard to make her out in the back row, but there she was, like always. Her eyes were closed, her shoulders slouched, and her hands clasped in her lap. I watched as my girlfriend lost the front she normally put on for me, as the tears began to pitifully fall down her face, and the facade she treasured disappeared in the blink of an eye.

All that effort, all that pain and slow deterioration, the deliberate kamikaze situation she put herself in everyday just to uphold the illusion that _I_ was going to get better. I remembered what Paul had said "If you lose Annabeth I don't think you'll be able to recover". I thought back to those few years we'd had in between the war and now, that small haven of perfect that I'd thought would be our forever. Was it possible that we could ever have that blissful life back again? I looked at Annabeth's face, her beautiful exhausted face, and knew that even a small smile, even a flicker of a happiness in her eyes was what I was going to aim for. I had to heal Annabeth before I could heal myself. After all, how could i heal myself if my world was dying?

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jason and Piper stand up from their front row seats, saw their glances over to annabeth as they began to move towards her, and suddenly I was moving, walking towards Annabeth. Jason saw me first, his eyes widening in disbelief, then Piper's eyes matched his, and they both stopped. I took this as an invitation on their behalf, and I walked quicker, my gaze completely focused on Annabeth. I stepped over the back bench, which Annabeth was sitting on alone, and sat down next to her. I shoved my hands in my pockets awkwardly, and sat there as she slowly looked up. Her eyes found mine, and there it was, a glimpse of happiness, a flicker of hope in her eyes. And there was the smile that so rarely appeared nowadays, glaring and optimistic in the glow of the purple flames. Silently I wrapped an arm around her, letting her melt into my side, and I relaxed against her, her small body allowing me to be me for a while. Piper and Jason sat back down, uneasy but relieved.

We didn't say a word to each other, we didn't need to. It was clear to us both what this was: an apology for everything I'd put her through in the past month, all the suffering and waiting. Her allowance of me to be there with her was her acceptance, her forgiveness. While the rest of the demigods sung gleefully, and laughed enough times to fill ten thousand lifetimes, we laughed in our own way, a silent inside laugh at our own failing pain that we knew wasn't going to be around for much longer. But sitting around that campfire, as demigods I'd grown up with and fought with and cared for began to notice me in the back row, I learnt something. It was the first time I'd been to a campfire since my Mum died, and one of the few times I'd been spotted in a large gathering of all of us as well. My appearance gathered attention fast. In between songs, the whispers grew, until it was hard for Chiron to speak over the hushed murmur of a hundred gossipping teenagers. I learn that I wasn't going to heal here. Not while the myth of the 'mourning Percy Jackson' stuck around, and it would until I was back to my normal self. It was an impossible loop if I stayed, I couldn't heal without the stigma surrounding me, but the stigma wasn't going to disappear until I healed. these people were my family, they formed a part of my home, but I had to fly the nest to find myself again.

When the campfire was over, the fire growing smaller and smaller every second, and the demigods pittering away slowly, trying to catch a glimpse of me, Annabeth and I moved to the front row, now empty, to try and relinquish in the dying heat of the embers. When everyone had left, even Chiron and Jason and Piper and Nico and Will and Leo who all left with concerned but gleeful looks on their faces, only then did I speak.

"Do you want to go away for awhile?" I asked, my voice soft but confident. Annabeth looked at me, her face curious.  
"To where?" She asked, that was a good sign, she wasn't against the idea.  
"Don't mind, you can decide." I said, her hand came up to clasp mine which rested on her shoulder, and she smiled at my chivalry. In truth, I didn't really care where we went, as long as I was with her.  
"Why?" She asked simply, genuine concern in her face. I brought my other hand up to stroke her cheek, so so grateful for everything about her.  
"This is our home, it always will be; but it's too big a reminder of what we've lost. I think we need to escape it for awhile, and maybe that will help us to escape the pain." I explained softly, but unashamedly. It was the first time either of us had mentioned that we were struggling, or that we were in pain, and it was a huge weight off of both of our shoulders.  
"Yes." She whispered simply, but she sounded happy, and sure enough she was smiling. "Yes of course I'll go with you."

She launched herself at me with a hug, her arms wrapping around my neck tightly, and mine encircled her waist. It wasn't a soft embrace, nor was it passionate. But it was filled with excitement and thrill. We were going to be alone, together.

We were going to get better.

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 **What did you think? Tell me if you enjoyed it or not in a review please, because they literally keep me writing. Again, there is no updating schedule for the next chapter, but I'm hoping it will be in the next week. Thanks for reading!**


	6. Chapter 4

**So we're back with another chapter, this time we're in Italy with Percy and Annabeth as they learn how to heal. Enjoy!**

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Annabeth POV

"Don't you dare…." I warned Percy, my voice sturdy and authoritative, the exact voice I knew didn't work on my boyfriend, because he was also the one person who'd heard me make every other noise I could make: snorts, moans, cackling. You name it, he'd heard it come from me, most likely _because_ of him as well. He moved the chocolate bar in his hand; the chocolate bar I'd been saving for myself the past two days; closer to his open mouth. His eyes, filled with a gleeful smirk, watched my frustrated face the whole time. "Percy, I swear on all of Athena's books that if you eat that you won't be getting any sex for a month." I threatened. He paused, his hand stuck in mid-air on it's way to his mouth. But he knew me too well, and knew that that wasn't going to happen. And so he popped the whole thing into his mouth without another moment's hesitation. My mouth dropped open in shock, and then closed as I gritted my teeth in annoyance.  
"You're going to pay for that Perseus Jackson." I told him. He simply showed me a rather chocolatey grin, defiance at it's best. But then I sprang at him and his humorous beam turned into a look of genuine fear. I grabbed his shoulders playfully, pushing his back against the wall, and pinning his legs between mine.  
"You're mine now." I whispered, leaning forward so that he could feel my breath against his neck.  
"Oh I don't think so Love." He whispered back, his voice low and animalistic. Suddenly his hands were on my waist, and I was thrown over his shoulder in a fireman's lift. I shrieked at the movement, and hit his back with my palms in protest, but he simply chuckled as he walked towards the balcony. I writhed and struggled against his hold, but his hands were faim against my waist and hips, I wasn't going anywhere. I felt the warm sun against my bare back unexpectedly, and knew that he had stepped onto the balcony. He lifted me off of his shoulder, but instead of putting me down on the floor, he swung me up into his arms bridal style. I looked up at his suntanned face, now spotted with freckles here and there. His grin was matched with the mischievous sparkle in his green eyes, and as always, his untameable hair stood up at all ends. He looked so different to two months ago, what was once a pale, sunken face was now tanned and healthy. His eyes stood out with renewed energy and will to live, he'd put back on the weight he'd scarily lost (you could no longer see his ribs under the layer of muscle he'd built up) and he was smiling. Always smiling.

Two months ago I was walking on eggshells around him, always scared that with one wrong move I was going to push him into a never-ending pit of depression.

Slowly, he leaned forward, dangerously close to being over the balcony wall, so that our bodies were precariously balancing between safety and dropping twenty stories down to our deaths. I let out a yelp as he continued to lean forward, and dug my nails into his bicep.  
"Percy, if I die because you're trying to prove that you're stronger than me I will find you in the underworld and murder you so much that even Hades won't be able to see you." I warned through gritted teeth. He smirked, taking that as my admittance to defeat and took a couple of steps back, so that we were both safe on hard ground, rather than mid-air.  
"Consider me warned." He said, his grin large and proud.  
"You going to put me down then?" I suggested, nodding to our current position.  
"Nope." He said, shaking his head, his black hair fell into his eyes,and I brushed it out of the way laughingly.  
"And why would that be?"  
"Because you're mine and you're not going away." I rolled my eyes at his ridiculous announcement (Percy knew he didn't own me), but blushed on the inside at his sweetness.  
"But if we're like this" I said, pointing to my body in his arms. "we can't do things like…." I leaned up and whispered into his ear all the things that I would never say to anyone else. His eyes widened as I whispered the obscenities into his ear, and I felt his heartbeat quicken against my arm.  
"Ummm, welll…...I mean…..you can't-" He stuttered, but I cut him off quickly by pressing my finger to his lips. He went silent immediately.  
"Put me down and I'll see what I can do about that arrangement." I reasoned, and finally, he gently dropped my feet to the floor. I breathed out a sigh of relief, and walked back into our room, swaying my hips slightly, because there was no way that that boy didn't look at my but when I was wearing a bikini. He stayed where he was, staring at me with a slightly open mouth.  
"You going to stand there gawking forever? Or are you going to come in here and help me get this bikini off?" I called over my shoulder. That made him come running.

Percy POV

The sun burning my back as I lay face down on a towel on the little beach that had become our regular haunt was a welcome heat as I let it dry the water littered in little droplets off my back. I tilted my head up slightly, resting my chin on my clasped hands as I stared out into the blue horizon. Automatically, my eyes scanned the view for Annabeth until I could see her. She was sitting with her back to me in the shallows of the ocean, letting the waves wash over her legs as she drew pictures in the sand that disappeared every time a new wave washed in. A blue and white swimming costume donned her body, emphasising the subtle curves and muscles I knew she resented. She was forever hating herself for fearing that her body wasn't curvy enough, or the amount of muscle she had was too much for a girl. If Clarisse ever heard her mutter those words, Annabeth would be flat on her back with a knee pressed to her throat in seconds. I prefered to take a more relaxed approach to calming her worries by telling her that she was perfect at every opportunity that I got.

She was doing so much better than two months ago, her grey eyes had gained back the sharp intelligent glint that they'd lost, her face was no longer hollow and pasty, but tanned and full. She slept through the nights blissfully, no longer plagued by the hauntingly terrifying nightmares like two months ago. And she laughed, she laughed like she had no care in the world, like laughing was the key to immortality. I was forever trying to capture a picture of her laughing on the camera Paul had brought me when we left. He told me that there would come a day when we would no longer be able to remember these days, and that pictures were the best way to keep our moments stored up. And I was getting a lt better at using it, finally learning how to use the different filters and setting to produce pictures that were at least good enough to frame. But I still couldn't get a good picture of Annabeth laughing. I needed one that captured the small crinkles she got next to her eyes as they squeezed shut, it needed to capture the way she leant forward slightly when her body became wracked with laughter, it needed to show the way she sifted her hand through her blonde hair to move it away from her face when she leant forward. It needed to seize the exact image of her laughter, but so far I was failing.

There was still pain for both of us, there were still nights where I woke up screaming for my Mum, and Annabeth had to whisper into my ear where I was and hold me until I had stopped crying. there will still moments where something reminded me of her and I had to blink back the tears. Whenever I got sent a picture of Lucy doing something new from Paul, my heart hurt at how similar they were. Headstrong and determined, if Lucy was struggling to do something, she would persevere until she could do it, my Mum was the same. But on the whole, we were doing so much better than before, we were successfully healing.

We both missed camp a lot, especially as we weren't used to these days of waking up late, going to bed later, and having absolutely no responsibilities throughout the day. Our friends back home sent us pictures and messages every day (since Leo had finally cracked the demigods with phones issue and created phones that didn't alert monsters to our presence, don't ask me how it works I couldn't tell you), and we irise messaged at least once a week if they found the time.

I watched as Annabeth stood up, brushing the sand off of her hands and legs, and slowly walking over to me, taking her time in the sun. There was no need to rush, we had all the time in the world in our little haven.

But we both knew that we would have to go back soon; there was no reason for us to stay here any longer seeing as we were both doing good. And yes, I wanted to go home, to get to see Jason and Chiron and Nico and Piper and Leo and Tyson. And Gods I missed Lucy and Paul like mad, I couldn't wait to be able to pop round just to put Lucy to bed and sit to eat dinner with Paul. But with going home came reminders, reminders of my Mum, memories would come back, the beach where she died was a part of camp, and a part of me. With going home came responsibilities, would people expect me to go back to being the leader I was before straight away? Because I wanted to be, God I wanted to have my life back, but was I ready for it yet? With going home came the stares and the whispers, the stigma surrounding me that I was now permanently broken. Could I bare all those looks and glances that taunted me with memories of the day my Mum died? Here in our quiet isolated town in Italy, people didn't know who we were, they didn't know what had happened, they just smiled at me when they walked past me on the beach or in a restaurant because they were friendly and they didn't ask the questions I dreaded. Would Annabeth be okay going back? Did she want to take on all her responsibilities again?

But most of all, could I survive going back, or would it put me right back in the position I was in before we left?

She sat down on the towel next to me, gently brushing her fingers over the planes of my back, up my neck and back down again, right to the waistband of my shorts.  
"You want to go for a swim before we had back to the apartment?" She asked gently, relishing in the time we could spend alone together here.  
"Of course." I replied, getting up from my comfortable position and stretching with a grin. There were days when we would race to the water, have competitions to see who could get there first and who could make the biggest splash: all of which were stupid trials of course because., as the son of Poseidon, it was obvious I was going to win. I took her hand in mine, pulling her up to her feet, and walked with her over to the water.

Standing waist deep in the half clear, half murky blue water, I was at peace. Before coming here, I couldn't stand being near water, let alone the ocean. It was too big a reminder of the fact that my Mother died in my home place, the place I was meant to be strongest. And it was all too big a reminder of what I could do, how powerful I could be when the wrong emotions ran me over. But then we came here, to this tiny beach on the edge of a quaint town with two restaurants and one ice cream parlour. It reminded me of who I was. I was the demigod percy Jackson, son of Poseidon and Sally Jackson. My father gave me his powers and his temper, the ability to destroy things and lives with the snap of my fingers and a flood of water. But my Mother gave me her good-nature, the ability to assess a situation and understand who was in the wrong, she gave me her mercy and her love for others. Admittedly my Father's side came out more than my Mother's did, but they made me who I was, and it relieving to find something that reminded me of that.

This place helped me see the water as my friend again, something that gave me strength and allowed me control over something. I let the water weave between my fingers, watching as I allowed the water to travel up and down my flat palm that was resting against the ocean. Annabeth came up behind me and wrapped her her arms around my waist, resting her chin on my shoulder. I leaned back against her sturdy body, letting the combined feeling of her love and the water's strength wash over me.

"We should go home soon." I heard myself say, then stood up straight at my own horror, because I really hadn't been planning to suggest that. Against my back, Annabeth stiffened.  
"Do you want to go home?" She murmured, her voice tense, like she was scared as to what the answer would be. I turned around to face her, her arms stayed wrapped around my waist, and mine pulled her closer to me.  
"I don't know. Everything here is so perfect, it's been exactly what we needed." I explained, letting my emotions take control because I had absolutely no idea what I was saying. "But we have to go home at some point, we have responsibilities and jobs and friends and family to see."  
"At the moment, you have no responsibility but to yourself." She said fiercely, her hands coming up to either side of my face so that she could make sure I was looking at her. I smiled at her protectiveness.  
"And to you." I said, smiling. "I have a responsibility to you too." She smiled back, evidently grateful for my returned compassion.  
"But do you _want_ to go back?" Annabeth asked again, trying to get a proper answer out of me. I sighed.  
"I think so. I want to see Lucy and Paul, and all our friends of course. Now that I'm back to being myself, I can actually talk to them face to face. But….." I said, my eyes shining at the thought of seeing Lucy, and then my face dropping as I came to the conclusion that there _were_ reasons I didn't want to go home.  
"But?" Annabeth prompted, her face all concerned and cute as her eyebrows formed a crease where they scrunched up.  
"But I'm scared to see what people will think of me." I sighed, dropping my head in shame. Annabeth gently took my head by the chin, and tilted it up so that I was looking at her.  
"Explain." She said simply.  
"I spent a month alone at camp, people barely saw me, and when they did it was clear that I wasn't okay, and it looked like I wasn't even trying to get better. Maybe I wasn't, I don't know." I muttered. "And then we took off on holiday in the middle of camp's busiest season, where we both had responsibilities to uphold. I don't want to go back and find people looking at me in shame because they no longer respect me, or that they're afraid of me now, because I ignored them before." I sighed, closing my eyes. "In short, I want to go back and find that everything is back to being the same as it was before my Mum died."

We were both silent for a couple of minutes.

"I'm just being stupid right?" I sighed eventually, the silence bothering me. Annabeth shook her head furiously, her grey eyes glistening in the reflection of the sun.

"No. _No._ " She insisted, wrapping her hands around my arms, as if her grip on me would secure me to her. "You're just scared, and for a good reason too. There's no way that things will be the same as they were before immediately, I don't think they ever can be, everything has changed quite a bit. But if we are going to go home, then we have to go back with faith and hope, because this is our life, and we get to control how we live it." Annabeth looked me deep in the eyes and said, "We came here to heal, to learn to live again. And we have, god we're so much more _alive_ than we were two months ago. And I'm scared too, scared that we'll go home and everything we've been able to escape from will come running straight back at us. But we'll be together, and twice as strong as we've ever been because we have all these scars that make us _who we are_. And we have friends and family who will always be there for us to lean on. Going home means more than going back to a physical place, it means going back to a place that made you, to the place you live and breathe, to the people you know. Going home means regaining a part of you."

Wrapping my arms more securely around her, I pulled her body into mine, and stood still in the warm water for a while, simply relishing in the safety we felt in each others arms.  
"So we're going home?" Annabeth asked, a hint of hopefulness in her voice. I chuckled silently at her subtle eagerness, but nodded.  
"We're going home." I agreed.

* * *

 **What did you think? Please please tell me in a review, because they literally keep me writing.**  
 **I promise that there'll actually be some action in the next chapter, we'll get to see if our favourite couple have retained their fighting skills over these difficult months.**  
 **See you next time!**


	7. Chapter 5

**This chapter is getting posted a little later than I had planned for, but here it is and it's the longest one yet I think! I know I said there would be some action in this one, and there is definitely some shock, but unfortunately no action yet. I promise there will be in the next one.  
Happy Reading!**

* * *

Annabeth POV

We had decided to wait a week before going home, to give both us and our friends back home time to readjust to the idea of us being back at Camp. I booked the tickets for a middle of the night flight, meaning we would get home in the evening, while Percy told Jason and everyone else the news via Iris messaging. He came back into the room from speaking to them beaming, which was a welcomed sight.  
"What's so amusing?" I asked, getting up to go speak to them myself, as I knew Percy had left the feed on, and they were waiting for me. He shook his head.  
"Nothing, I just can't wait to see everyone again." He said, his limbs jittery with excitement fuelled nerves. I smiled half-heartedly at his enthusiasm, and disappeared into the bedroom quickly so that I wouldn't get interrogated for my melancholic anxiety.

Half an hour later I managed to peel myself away from an over-excited Piper and my sisters and brothers, and sliced my hand through the shimmering image of them all waving gleefully. I let out the breath I'd been holding in, and collapsed onto the bed. Percy found me there a couple of minutes later, his face concerned but not overly-concerned. He lay down on the bed beside me, joining me in looking up at the painting on the ceiling of the ocean. It was simple enough, but hints of gold in a few solitary waves made it glint in the sunlight that streamed in through the window.

"Everything okay?" Percy asked, despite the fact that he knew _something_ was wrong. He knew _that_ from the moment he walked in the room. But it was easier than asking "what's wrong?" and then having to acknowledge that we have pretty complicated lives and there's always something that's wrong.  
"I'm just worried about going back." I admitted, knowing by now that there was no point lying because he would get it out of me at some point. "I mean, I want to go home, so badly. I'm just scared that I won't be able to handle all the responsibilities that come with going home."

"I was actually thinking about that." Percy said. I turned my head to the side, looking at him quizzically. He elaborated. "Well, you basically live in my cabin right? Yet you're still head of the Athena Cabin?" He looked a little bit nervous, but continued anyway. "So I was thinking, what if you stepped down as head of Athena Cabin, and moved into my cabin permanently?"

My head rushed with the overwhelming possibilities of the moment.  
"I suggested that all way too fast, didn't I?" Percy said quietly, cringing into himself.  
"No no." I reassured him, struggling to breath. "Just thinking."  
"You don't have to decide now." He rushed to say, panicking that I was going to start having an anxiety attack. "It was just a suggestion." I waved his worries off and sat up to think properly.

What was the point of me continuing to be head of Athena Cabin? I was barely ever their anyway, and I'd stuck it out for a good ten years now. Maybe it was time for me to finally relax. And moving into Percy's cabin, that sounded…...normal, because that was where I was meant to be, with him.  
"I could go back to doing the architecture in Olympus." I breathed. Percy nodded eagerly.

"And maybe, if and when we feel like it, we could go to New Rome for a few years. Go to college." He suggested.

Everything was falling into place. We could go home, to the place we belong, but step down from our duties, let the new generation of demigods take over. I could do architecture in New Rome, Percy could do marine biology. We could begin to live our lives as fairly normal functioning adults.

"Yes." I whispered. Percy looked at me in disbelief, his eyes slowly widening with surprise and happiness. "Yes yes yes I'll move in with you. I can go back to finishing off the new buildings and monuments in Olympus. And when we're ready we'll go to New Rome, go to college. Then we'll come back to Camp, to our real home, and….." I tailed off because usually what came after that bit was marriage and children. Percy and I weren't ready to discuss that yet.

Percy launched at me with a hug, wrapping his arms around me tightly. I shrieked and laughed at his sudden show of affection while he murmured "I love you" over and over again into my shoulder. I mumbled against his unruly hair that had fallen against my face, that if he wasn't careful he was going to crush me against the mattress. With that he half-released me, kneeling over me with a cheeky grin on his youthful face.  
" I can think of a way in which you'd enjoy being crushed into the mattress." He said, a mischievous glint in his eyes. He leaned down and captured my lips in a kiss, my hands going up to weave into his hair.  
"You're impossible." I whispered against his persistent mouth. "But I love you anyway." he smiled against my lips, and tightened his arms around me further.

A week later and we were sitting on the plane, ready to land. Seeing as flying was a bit risky for Percy, Jason had gotten us specific permission form his father (albeit grudgingly) for us to fly home. Although I think it involved a lot of calling in favours and guilt tripping his absent Father.  
"You okay?" I asked Percy, who had stopped watching 'The Breakfast Club' for the landing, and was currently gripping the arm rests so hard that he feared he was going to leave a dent in them - demigod power and everything.  
"Sure. Landing is my favourite part of flying." He said through gritted teeth. I raised my eyebrows at him.  
"Then why do you look like you're going to rip the armrest from the seat?" I asked.  
"Just because it's my favourite part, doesn't mean I enjoy it." He huffed. I chuckled at his reluctance to flying, although it was not without reason, and put my headphones back on to enjoy my last few moments of peace before we were bombarded by our friends (who had insisted on meeting us at the airport) at the terminal.

When the plane landed, and we were finally allowed off of it, Percy and I wandered absentmindedly hand in hand to luggage claim, both of our hearts racing as we thought about seeing our friends after so long. I knew that percy was currently the most scared, seeing as since his Mum's death, he had only spoken to them properly through Iris message, and he feared it was going to be awkward with the sudden transition of depressed Percy to normal Percy. Our bags took another five minutes to come round the turntable, and when we had both hand in hand, we took a deep breath each and walked through the doors that lead to the exit building.

They weren't there. I had expected at least Jason and Piper to turn up, or Nico and Hazel (as Frank and her were currently visiting from Camp Jupiter), but no one was there. Percy and I looked at each other in confusion, and had another look around. But they were definitely not there. We sighed in unison as we stepped outside, the combination of the chilling October air and the knowledge that we were now going to have to find a taxi a toll on our shoulders. I checked my phone, no messages, and calling Piper came up empty. Percy tried to call Jason as well, and he didn't pick up either.  
"This was hardly the welcome party I expected." I admitted as we climbed into a taxi.  
"Same. I wasn't exactly looking forward to the huge greeting party, but I'm a little disappointed now." Percy sighed, buckling his seatbelt and giving the driver direction.  
"Do you think everything's okay?" I asked nervously, biting my lip as I thought of all the things that could have gone wrong. "I mean Piper not answering her phone is definitely not unusual. But them not turning up to greet us after we've been away for two months _is_ unusual."

In the taxi we tried calling _everyone_. And no one picked up; not Piper, or Jason, or Leo, or Nico, or Hazel, or Frank, or Will, or Grover, or Chiron. None of my brothers or sisters picked up, even the phone number Camp used for the 'strawberry business' didn't get picked up.  
"Okay, now I'm really worried." Percy voiced once we'd finished calling _everyone_.  
"Maybe they're just all at a campfire?" I suggested, trying to convince myself as well as Percy. "Or heads of cabins meeting?"  
"You're brothers and sisters wouldn't be at a heads of cabins meeting." Percy pointed out morbidly. I sighed and leaned back against the taxi seat.  
"What if something really bad has happened?" I asked, my voice quiet as I suggested our fears. Percy stiffened and didn't look at me.  
"Then we'll do our best to help." Percy said in a monotone, his hands clenching in and out of fists beside him. I turned to look out of the taxi window, leaning my head against the cold window, grateful for the distraction the view provided me with.

We had no idea what was going, no way to communicate with anyone from home, and we couldn't even Iris message anyone because we were in the taxi with a mortal driver. It was hell to be rendered so useless, the purest form of torture for Percy and I. Of course, everything could be okay, there could be something wrong with the telephone lines, and Piper and Jason could be stuck at Camp in a meeting, or simply stuck in traffic. Only there wasn't any traffic, and when Percy called Paul, he picked up on the third ring. Paul was blissfully unaware of any problems with Camp, and reminded us that we were meant to be coming back to dinner tomorrow evening to see him and Lucy. Percy decided to spare him the trouble of worrying with us, and told him to stay inside with Lucy for today; simply telling him that with us being back in the country, monsters may now associate their scent with his.

Percy hung up the phone and looked to me with a sigh.  
"Well, now we know the phones are working." He admitted gravely. I nodded solemnly, every passing second without a call from Piper apologising for the camp meeting they'd gotten stuck in, or even a text with some sort of explanation, becoming harder and harder.

In Italy, we'd had a peaceful two months without any interruptions from monsters knocking at our doors to try and eat us. Ever since the war with Gaia, monsters had been more paranoid to attack demigods, more aware now of the danger we actually posed to them. But that didn't mean there weren't the odd few who got cocky and thought themselves better than the rest. But the Italian monsters seemed to be _extremely_ paranoid around us, and as a result, meant we didn't get attacked once on our holiday.

It was only now that that began to feel a bit suspicious.

Half an hour later, and with no communication from _anyone_ from Camp, and even more worry upon our shoulders, we stepped out of the taxi, a few hundred metres away from the Camp border. We paid the taxi driver, tipping him generously so that he didn't ask questions about why we were asking to be dropped off in the middle of nowhere. The moment the taxi was out of sight, Percy was waving his hand while pulling a drachma out of his pocket, causing a spray of water to fill the air, and tossing the gold coin into the mist.  
"Oh Iris Goddess of the Rainbow, accept my offering. Show me Jason Grace." He said to the shimmering spray of water. My heart sank into my stomach as nothing happened, and I saw Percy swallow nervously at the lack of response from the Iris Message.  
"Show me Chiron." I said when it was clear that we weren't going to see Jason. Still, the spray of water remained just that, and no image of an aged centaur appeared.  
"Show me Camp Half-Blood." Percy said after another pause of depressing nothing. And this time, the image _did_ change, and we were shown more than just continuous spraying water. But what we did see made our hearts stop and the world stop turning.

"Holy Athena." I breathed as my eyes lay on the sight of my home in desperate ruins. The Iris message showed the view of Camp from the top of half-blood hill, looking down onto the Big House and the ever-expanding ring of cabins. Only it looked like a different version of our Camp, from an alternative reality where Chaos reigned and fire was it's weapon. Most of the buildings were destroyed, and cabins lay as piles of rubble on the upturned grass, while others were on fire, demigods homes and livelihoods burning down before our very eyes. Both the Poseidon and Athena cabins were simply lumps of stone lying on the ground now, and there was no way of knowing that they had been home to children in the first place. Half of the Big House was gone, reduced to blocks of aged stone scattered around the area. While the other half was in flames, the stone and slate tile roofing somehow burning with eternal vigour. The most terrifying part about the image though, was the fact that there were no demigods about, none that we could see at least, dead or alive, and despite the wavering flames that burned off of our home, the site was completely still for the first time in its existence.

I looked to Percy to see the image of our burning home reflected in his eyes, the usual speckled green turned to dirty amber in the light of the Iris message. Finally, I managed to wake from my trance and waved my hand through the image, shaking my head clean of the terrifying thoughts that were plaguing me. In a burst of movement, I practically ripped my suitcase open to pull out my dagger, which had been cleverly concealed from airport metal detectors by an ingenious bag Leo had created for me before we left, of my own design. I pushed both of our bags into a bush, hiding them from any passers-by who may take a fancy to our stuff, and it only took one look between us before we set off running full pelt down the road towards woods. We vaulted logs and skipped over branches as we attempted not to trip over our own haste, our hearts beating too fast for us to comprehend what was really happening.

Neither of us considered what we were really doing, whether running full speed into what had appeared to be our destroyed, and potentially dangerous home was a good idea. Neither of us thought about what we might face when we walked through the border. Neither of us considered that we may have to fight when we got there, seeing as we had no armour and only a dagger and Riptide between us. Neither of us considered the fact that a destroyed home meant that a fight may have taken place, meaning that there could be injured, even dead demigods there (and neither of us were prepared for that sight). Neither of us considered that we may have to face the possibility of dead children (for we had now had demigods as young as nine living among us), friends and family by ourselves.

Suddenly an image of my youngest and newest sibling appeared in my mind. His name was Alfie, and he was only ten, and although he had an evidently brilliant mind and he would grow up to become a fantastic child of Athena, he was currently obsessed with the mechanics of helicopters, and clutched a mini plastic one wherever he went. But in this image, Alfie was dead, lying still on the ground, his brown eyes scarily open and still, with his little fingers loose around the toy helicopter. I blinked and the image was gone, replaced with more familiar camp forest, but Alfie was still in my head, and the principal remained. What had happened to my family?

But the moment we broke through the tree line, our panting selves coming to a halt on the top of Half blood hill, where Thalia's tree stood, and we realised that there was no longer any magical border protecting our Camp - our minds went blank.

It was worse in real life.

Our home looked like a drakon had come storming through, crushing cabins and ground beneath it's bulking feet, while it breathed fire and storm upon everything else. Only the drakon must have been twelve times bigger than normal and much more powerful with scales of steel and a never-ending amount of fire in its throat, because the destruction and chaos it had caused was unreal. I could see the training sector of the Camp in the distance, and that too was reduced to ruins and fire and smoke. Our heavy breathing was the only sound in the air, and I could feel the smoke from the fires currently dissolving our cabins and livelihoods to ash, settling to the bottom of my lungs. The now ruined crater of my home looked terrifying in the crimson light of the setting sun, the red and orange hues making the fires look darker and I had to check twice that the colour of the water of the sea in the distance was simply reflecting the red of the sky, and it wasn't filled with blood.

We hurried to the bottom of the hill together, our feet silent against the grass as our training kicked in. Percy had pulled Riptide out of his pocket, and held it terrifyingly between his hands, his fierce and confused face reflecting in the golden blade. I clasped my dagger in one hand, my other hand clenching in and out of fists as I attempted to quell my unexplainable fear. Then at the bottom of the hill, as we neared the Zeus Cabin, could we understand the extent of the destruction wreaked upon our home. Only when we were standing next to it could we comprehend it properly. There really was nothing left. I stepped up to what used to be Jason's home, and let my fingers drag across the previously pure white stone, which was now blackened in places from the burning fire. Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the remaining outlined rectangle of stone that used to be the Zeus Cabin. The pictures that used to hang upon Jason's wall were littered across the floor and I gingerly picked up a photo of us seven with Nico and Reyna. It had been taken the day that Leo had returned home with Calypso (after we had thought for two months that he was dead and had had a funeral for him and mourned for him the bastard), and we had all both hugged and punched him for coming back and disappearing. Hazel, Frank and Reyna had fortunately been visiting at the time, and we had all been so overjoyed at the surprise of Leo's homecoming, that we couldn't wipe the smiles off of our faces for the rest of the day.

I smiled at the memory, before catching sight of the ruined room, and was reminded of the utter mystery and disaster in front of me. I pocketed the photo, as well as a couple of other personal ones, before scouring the no-longer-cabin thoroughly. Jason wasn't here (dead or alive) I finally realised, and after both Percy and I checked numerous other Cabins and the Big House and all the training areas, we came to the conclusion that there were no demigods here.

With every ruined part of our home that we came to, another dagger was pushed into our hearts, and our dreams/plans of a future here were slipping further and further away. Only a week ago, Percy and I were talking about living together in one cabin, going to college in new Rome, actually moving on together to _live_ our lives. Now, it didn't really seem like we were going to have that opportunity. And then there was the fact that roughly one hundred demigods were missing. Just gone. There were no bodies, no hiding children, everyone had disappeared.

"At least there are no dead bodies." I sighed to Percy as we met up after checking out two separate cabins. We had avoided the places that were on fire, our faces burning unusually as we walked past different cabins that had been overtaken by flame. I'd taken a look at the fires, and they weren't normal flames, for they were burning straight off of rock, and even Greek fire couldn't do that. Just another sign that we had absolutely no idea what we were facing here.

Percy gulped and nodded, pulling a piece of paper out of his pocket. He handed it to me silently, and I read it quickly. It was from the Big House, out of the many cabinets and files that held details about every demigod that was placed under Chiron's care. This particular piece of paper though, was a list of every single demigod that was currently living in Camp Half-Blood. It was written in 'date of arrival' order, with those who had been living here the longest as the bottom. My name was in the bottom five, seeing as I had been here since I was seven. Percy's name was in the top twenty, seeing as many demigods that had been here before him had died during the battle with Kronos and Gaia. At the top of the list in a box, was the number 134.

134 demigods who had gone missing without a trace, 134 children, teenagers and adults who had disappeared. Was Chiron with them? Had Argus disappeared too? What about all the horses and animals that lived in Camp?

My question about the animals was answered soon enough, because a couple of minutes later I found Percy kneeling in the large stables, next to the dead body of Blackjack. I looked down the rows of horses, and found every single one of them lying on their sides, a sword impaled into their stomachs and sticky blood dripping out of the wounds into puddles on the floor. I brought my hands up to my mouth shakingly, and went to stand by Percy. His head was bowed while his shoulders shook with the sobs that I knew all to well, his hands pressed against Blackjacks now cold body in a stance of utter devastation. I put one of my hands on his shoulders in an attempt to calm him. But all too soon his crying stopped, and he was getting up to stand in front of me. It was a terrifying sight, seeing him stand in front of his dead horse with such burning passion and fury in his eyes, and it was almost as terrifying as the moment after Sally died. But they were pretty similar situations, filled with confusion and rage and pain and mourning. The usual sea green of his eyes glinted as his mouth twitched while he treated to stop himself from tearing the already ruined place apart in fury.

"We need to find out who did this, and soon." He said through gritted teeth, his face covered in streaks from the crying. I nodded slowly, my brain already forming a plan of action.  
"We should go to Olympus, see what's being done there." I suggested quietly, the ironic peacefulness of our once safe home making my heart race. Percy nodded in agreement and we set off back up to the top of half-blood hill. We kept our weapons out, still wary of what could be hiding in the shadows, but on the way back we passed the Poseidon cabin, and neither of us could resist taking a proper look at the rubble of what was going to be our shared home.

I had dealt with having my own things getting destroyed many a time in my life, whether it was on a quest or just my siblings being stupid in the cabin and causing accidental fires (trust me it happens when twenty people are living in one room). When the Argo II crashed, I had many possessions on board that I couldn't save. But seeing them here, pictures and clothes and objects that I loved in Percy's cabin (which would have become mine too if it wasn't destroyed), a place where things and people were meant to be safe, unlike on a quest, that was hard. The fact that we had no knowledge of what had happened here made it harder to accept that our home was ruined.

Fortunately, we were in and out of there in minutes. After I saw Percy sag against a pile of rocks at the realisation that everything was gone, I ushered us out of the remainder of his Cabin quickly enough so that we were out of breath when we reached the top of the hill. We both took a last look at our once safe haven, now destroyed and looking slightly like a graveyard on fire in the eerie moonlight that had just appeared, before we took off running into the forest.

It was dark now, and I couldn't help but think about what could be lurking in the forest, but I was with the son of Poseidon, and unless whatever had turned our home into ash and rubble was still around, we were as safe as we ever were, unlike our friends and family, because Hades knows what had happened to them and what they were currently facing.

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 **What did you think? Please tell me in a review because they're like my lifeblood and I get so happy reading them.  
The updates are going to get a little more sparse form now on, as I'm heading head first into exam season. However I am going to continue this story even if it kills me. Look out for the next chapter!**


	8. Chapter 6

**Hey Guys! Ready for another chapter? Here we go...**

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"The Council will see you now." An air nymph said to us in a breezy voice, wafting out of the little waiting room I'd never seen before (that we'd been ordered to stay in until the Gods were ready to see us), on legs that didn't seem to touch the ground. Annabeth pulled me up by the hand, before letting go of me. I was left with a sort of emptiness without the warmth of her hand in mine, but I knew that we needed to appear strong and unemotional for this next bit.

"Wait." Annabeth said, just as I was about to push open the large doors that led to the council room, putting her hand on my chest to stall me. "Just remember, Ares is going to be in there. Don't lose your cool." I gritted my jaw.  
"Okay." I said impassively, every muscle in my body locked at the idea of seeing him.  
"Percy." Annabeth said in warning, panic beginning to show on her face. That managed to calm me down, I didn't want to get Annabeth in a frenzy. I relaxed my body.  
"I promise." I said genuinely, looking her in the eyes so she would trust me. She let out a breath and nodded, allowing me to push open the polished white granite double doors that led into the throne room.

It was always a massive ego-deflator walking into the throne room, and facing the omnipotent beings that were the twelve most important Gods in their huge individual thrones with their perfect bodies and beautiful faces that looked down at you from such a great height. Fortunately, they seemed to have reduced their body sizes to equal to mine and Annabeth's, so now they only looked like perfect humans that had an aura of power surrounding them rather than omnipresent giants. As always, heading up the semicircle of Gods and Goddesses were Zeus in his platinum, lightning bolt ornate throne, and Hera in her pure white throne. When Annabeth and I came to the centre of the half-circle, we bowed low to the Gods. Already I had caught sight of Ares, smirking in his leather and chrome throne like he owned the place, and my presence in the room only made him cockier.

"Lord Zeus, Lady Hera." Annabeth said in greeting, looking to the two Gods. It was clear that they had been arguing, and not just those two, everyone in the room looked tense and slightly red in the face.  
"We presume you have come regarding the missing demigods." Hera asked, a slightly snooty look on her face, as if she were above it all. After all, none of the demigods were her children, and therefore not her problem. Both Annabeth and I clenched our fists and gritted our teeth. They weren't just missing _demigods_ to us, they were our _family_.  
"Yes." I answered, attempting to hide my anger. "Also the fact that our camp looks like an extremely large drakon wandered through it, crushing our home underfoot and somehow setting stone alight with fire."  
"You will speak to my wife with respect." Zeus bellowed down at me from his throne. I looked up at him, his face now slightly aged from the stress of the disappearance of his son, and couldn't help but talk back.  
"I'm sorry but it's a bit hard to be polite when I come back after two months to find my entire family is missing." I drawled sarcastically. Annabeth put her hand on my hand, shooting me a warning look from behind her hair.  
"My son has a point." Came the authoritative voice of my father from my right. I looked over to see a solemn but calm face staring back at me. He looked the same as he ever did, the untamed black beard matching his untameable black hair (where I got mine from), and a young, mid-twenties face. He wore a bulky fishing jacket over simple trousers and a plain t-shirt, with a cap on his head and chunky boots on his feet. In his hand he held his trident, golden and shining obnoxiously, and his thumb drew little lines on it absentmindedly.  
"That's easy coming from you Poseidon." Came the voice of the usually young and spritely looking Hermes, who now looked like he'd aged thirty years. He dragged his face through his hand and his brown eyes came to meet mine. he actually looked slightly scared, which I hadn't really realised was possible for a God to feel. They were so obnoxiously powerful and arrogant that it was hard to see past their exteriors. But looking round, I saw that all the Gods who had children that had gone missing (so basically everyone bar Hera, Artemis and my Dad) had aged significantly and had the same frantic look in their eyes.

They were scared for their children.

"Your only demigod child is standing safe in front of you. We're more worried about the safety of our own children than what has happened to that blasted camp. God knows it's been falling apart for years." He argued, his voice deep and tired.  
"Don't you dare." I whispered, my voice heavy and painful as my heart beat quick and my blood ran hot. "Don't you dare dismiss the place that was a home to _your_ children like it was nothing. _That_ camp that was 'supposedly falling apart'" I said making quotes in the air with my fingers, my voice growing louder and more passionate. "as you say, provided a loving home for your children seeing as none of you" I said, turning to all the other Gods in the room "have ever bothered to love your children yourselves. You couldn't be bothered to take care of them or get to know them yourself so you sent them off to a Summer camp, where they could learn about you. A camp that _we_ turned into a loving home where children could find a proper family that bothered to get to know them." My breath was coming fast and Hermes looked like he was going to murder me and Annabeth looked panicked, but all I could think about was how much Camp Half-Blood had changed my life, and I couldn't let it go. "So don't you dare sit there and slag off my home, _our_ home, your children's home that is now in ruins, when you use it indispensably."

The room was silent for a couple of minutes, all the Gods glaring down at me from their thrones with outraged looks on their faces. Athena looked like she was both furious and embarrassed for her daughter to be seen with me, but Annabeth just stared straight ahead impassively, her shoulder against mine comfortingly, telling me that she stood with me on this one. Zeus, Hera and my Dad were all looking at me scrupulously, as if they thought I knew something that they didn't. For the first time I noticed that Hades was in the room, sitting looking bored in his black ivory throne. He wasn't as aged as the rest of the Gods, though there were wrinkles surrounding his eyes now. We regarded each other for a few seconds before I looked away, there was something about him that didn't quite add up. Nico was missing, and he was closer with Nico than most other Gods were with their children were, and yet he didn't seem as worried about it as everyone else.

"What do we know about the disappearance?" I asked finally, breaking the tense silence. All the Gods regarded me, but it was Aphrodite out of everyone that answered my question.  
"We last had contract with the demigods at 2:46 pm, regarding some wood nymph laws that needed sorting out. That's the last thing we heard from them. At roughly four o'clock Hephaestus looked to check in on his children, and instead found Camp Half-Blood destroyed and 134 demigods missing. Chiron, Argus, Dionysus, who were at the camp at the time, also seem to have gone missing, as well as all the satyrs, and other creatures that were in the camp at the time. The only beings in the camp that weren't taken were the wood nymphs and water spirits, because of their attachment to the camp." She said in a tragically beautiful voice. Usually it would have entranced me into a daydream, but things were different now. Firstly, I had Annabeth, and no pretend image or voice Aphrodite put on could be more beautiful than Annabeth's looks and voice. Secondly, it wasn't exactly the time to get distracted.

I was surprised to hear that Dionysus had gone missing. They (whoever 'they' was) had managed to abduct a God, and one of the main twelve too. That was both impressive in skill and scary. What were we dealing with here?

"136 demigods." Annabeth piped up. I looked over to see her intelligent eyes burning intensely.  
"Pardon?" Aphrodite said, looking confused that Annabeth was questioning her knowledge.  
"136 demigods are currently missing." She corrected Aphrodite, nodding to herself. "Frank Zhang, son of Mars, and Hazel Levesque, daughter of Pluto were visiting from Camp Jupiter. They went missing too."

Both Ares and Hades shifted uncomfortably in their seats at the mention of their Roman forms, and it brought me extreme pleasure to see how irritating this was for them.  
"Do we have any idea of their whereabouts? Or who abducted them?" I asked, looking to no God in particular.  
"No." This time it was Artemis, looking out of place and fidgety, an extremely unusual look for her.  
"What about the Hunters? Where they taken too?" Annabeth asked, seemingly unafraid of asking the Goddess who already looked uncomfortable further questions.  
"Fortunately, no. It seems only people inside Camp Half-Blood's borders were taken." She admitted, looking slightly sheepish. It was obvious that she felt out of place here; she had no children to be taken, and her hunters were perfectly safe. "My hunters are currently out trying to find leads on the missing demigods, but the wolves haven't picked up a scent yet and we have no other leads." I imagined Thalia, tirelessly scouring forests and fields for her brother's scent with a wolf sniffing the ground in front of her. She'd already lost her brother once; to lose him twice was too hard a blow. She felt out of place because she had no children to be taken, and none of her hunters were taken.  
"So everyone at Camp Jupiter is okay?" I asked, my brain already working to try and see who we could get answers from.  
"Yes." Hera answered slowly, looking slightly reluctant to answer me. All the other Gods looked down at their laps, suddenly going shy.  
"And have you contacted them to see if they might know anything, or to ask for their help?" Annabeth asked slowly, she'd noticed the God's reluctance to be a part of this section of the conversation before I had, but we needed answers so she was willing to ask the difficult questions. Her question was followed with a short silence before my Dad answered this time.  
"We were a bit….reluctant, to contact Camp Jupiter in case they were…...in case they played a part in all this." He said carefully and slowly, choosing his words with care. I clenched my fists beside me. Annabeth put her hand on my tight fist in a warning, but I was already angry.  
"You think that _they_ kidnapped 136 demigods, a God, Chiron, Argus all the satyrs and all other creatures that were in Camp at the time?" I asked unbelievably, wandering how on Earth they came to that conclusion.  
"No, no. Just that they may have had a part in it." My Dad explained, rushing to try and quell my anger. "Son, we don't know what we're dealing with here. We just want to cover all the possibilities so that we can work this out as soon as possible." I opened my mouth to argue but Annabeth cut in before I could say anything.  
"What about all the wood nymphs and water spirits? Surely they haven't gone missing too?" She asked, she had that look on her face that told me she was deep in thought, and her mind was racing with possibilities.  
"No, but when we sent a nymph to go speak to them, they refused to come out of their trees and the water." Apollo piped up for the first time, looking extremely tired and ragged. His clothes were the complete opposite of the designer brands he usually complemented his good looks with; instead he wore aged navy cargo pants paired with an unusual neon yellow running top. It was quite the ensemble.  
"I can see if I can do anything about the water spirits." I suggested, sounding tired myself now. "They may talk to me." Apollo nodded gratefully, and for the first time, I saw past the young and upbeat image he usually portrayed, and found a concerned sort-of-father-figure.  
"So we can probably get some kind of picture as to what it was that abducted everyone from the water spirits, but they probably didn't see much because….well, you know how water spirits are. They disappear into the deepest parts of the lake the moment a demigod goes near it. They probably vanished to the bottom of the lake the moment whatever it was that abducted everyone took one step in camp." Annabeth reasoned, and everyone in the room knew that she was right.  
"What are you suggesting?" Athena asked her daughter, leaning forward in her throne curiously.  
"I'm saying that we should focus on the wood nymphs rather than the water spirits. Not only were they less likely to run away from the danger, but those that had trees on the edge of the forest would have been able to see everything as it happened." My girlfriend explained, her hands waving around in big irrelevant movement as she went further and further in-depth in her reasoning.  
"But they wouldn't talk to another nymph? They're hardly likely to talk to you." Hades sneered not unkindly from his chair, the first thing that he'd said since we'd come in.  
"That's only because they didn't know that nymph, sometimes it's hard to talk to a stranger about a possibly traumatic event." She argued, her eyes locking on mine. We'd both experienced that.  
"So we need to find someone that they're used to. Someone that they know." I said nodding, catching onto what Annabeth was getting at.  
"But also someone that wasn't in Camp Half-Blood when everyone else was abducted." She finished for me. We both sighed, thinking it a task impossible.

Then the switch clicked in our brains.  
"GROVER!" We both shouted at the same time, looking to each other in complete embarrassment. Not only had we forgotten about our joint best friend since we left Camp, but we had also forgotten that Grover was one of the only satyrs that wouldn't have been in the Camp at the time that everyone else got abducted. Four months ago Grover had left for what would probably be regarded as the greatest but also most uptight road trip ever. He and Juniper (his long term girlfriend) had volunteered to be the 'ambassadors' to the new generation of all those who answered to the Council of the Cloven Elders and other wild spirits. They're job was to basically travel around the country for five months (a trip that had been a long time in planning) and spread the word to different groups and communities of spirits, dryads, nymphs, satyrs etc about the importance of caring for themselves and the rest of the wild in such a time of pollution and environmental decay. God, I hadn't spoken to Grover in just over three months; the last time we spoke was a couple of days before my Mum died. He and Juniper had been visiting a colony of daisy dryads in Mexico at the time, and we'd spoken through Iris messaging. He had been planning to propose to Juniper a week later when they visited the Zilker Botanical Garden in Texas. It was a place maintained by humans, but little did they know that several thousand different types of nature spirits lived in that forrest, and it was renowned for its natural beauty. Juniper had always wanted to visit, and Grover had wanted to propose for a while now; so he figured that it would be the perfect moment. I could imagine him twitching and bleating nervously as he got down on one knee while Juniper, surprised as always at how in love Grover was with her, looked on in adoration and surprise.

"Okay. So we can hopefully get Grover here soon and he can talk to the nymphs and spirits for us. See how much information we can get from them." Annabeth said, the cogs in her brain whirring as she put together a plan for us.  
"We can bring him here now." Demeter said, speaking for the first time during the meeting. I'd never had anything to do with Demeter really, she was a very placid but grumpy woman. Muttering about seeds and agricultural facts. But her rule over agriculture and harvest gave her the greatest link to dryads, nymphs and spirits than anyone else in the room. Demeter snapped her fingers before anyone else in the room could protest, and before our very eyes appeared Grover and Juniper. Grover, in all his "Money can't buy love, but it can buy enchiladas" t-shirt glory, a green woolly hat on his head to cover his horns, and slacks surrounding his goat legs. He had his arm around the much smaller Juniper, who was currently taking a picture of whatever it was that they had been looking at before. Then their blissful moment of sightseeing wherever they had been and they realized where they were.  
"Holy Pan!" Grover shouted in shock, his arm tightening around the quaking Juniper protectively. His eyes scanned the twelve Gods nervously, waiting the moment he was vapourised for appearing in their council room. Little did he know that they had brought him here.  
"Percy!" he bleated when his eyes finally settled on me and Annabeth. "Annabeth!" he came bounding up to us, wrapping his lanky arms around us in one hug. It was squashed and awkward and one of my hands was trapped in between me and Annabeth but this was my best friend who I hadn't seen in over four months now. I wrapped my free arm around Grover and laughed at his enthusiastic show of affection.  
"It's good to see you too G-man." I chuckled, my mouth breaking into the biggest grin. We pulled away, and Annabeth went to hug Juniper while Grover and I spent a long time looking at each other. I left my hand on his shoulder, unable to part from him yet.  
"Long time no see." I commented. Grover nodded slowly, looking extremely confused and shocked and overwhelmed. I could see the tears beginning to well up in his eyes, so I quickly began to digest the circumstances for him.  
"We have a bit of a situation on our hands bud." I said, gripping his shoulder hard in my hand. Obviously my face showed how serious a situation this actually was, because his eyes widened before his face hardened with the severity of everything.  
"What happened?" He asked, his voice low and quiet, fearing the worst. I saw his eyes flick over to where Annabeth was standing with her arm around Juniper, trying to comfort her when she'd suddenly been summoned into the chamber of the Gods, a place she'd never been before.

"Why don't we take a short break?" My dad suggested out of the blue. Standing up from his chair and stretching nonchalantly. "Give you guys some time to explain things to Grover and…"  
"Juniper." Grover answered for my Dad quickly.  
"Juniper. We'll reconvene when you're ready. In the meantime the rest of us will see what else we can do." He finished. I nodded gratefully to him, bowed to the Gods who were quickly disappearing with a flick of their hand from the room, and ushered Grover and Juniper out of the room swiftly.

The moment we were out of the impressive but overwhelming and intimidating room both Juniper and Grover relaxed a little. But Grover's face was still hard with fear and anticipation.  
"What happened." He asked, his face which wasn't usually so serious told me he wasn't taking any detoring from the truth today.

I took a deep breath, and began.

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 **What did you think? Hope you enjoyed it. I know there was no action in this one, and I have been promising it for like three chapters now, but I fell like I have to set up the story before we get into the real action portion of it. Please continue to comment, because those comments are my lifeline.  
Look out for the next chapter!**


	9. Chapter 7

**Sorry for the ling delay for this chapter, I had a busy couple of weeks. I'm also officially in exam season now, so the updates are only going to be getting father and farther apart. But as always, I'll do my best!  
In this chapter we finally get some Grover and Percy time, as well as partially discovering the cause of the missing Demigods.  
Enjoy!**

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An hour later, Grover and I were sitting on a bench in the Garden of Pan, a new feature of Olympus that Annabeth had added after the war with Kronos to commemorate the forgotten God.  
"I'm sorry Percy." Grover said, his voice low and broken , even for him, and his head bowed so low so that I couldn't meet his eyes.  
"For what?" I asked, clueless as to what he was trying to get at. Still, he didn't lift his head so that I could look at him.  
"For not being here when….for not being here for you when you needed me most." Grover whispered. I couldn't help but smile at my compassionate friend.  
"I'm not gonna lie." I said cockily, leaning back against the bench. "Having you here would have helped." Grover's head bowed lower, and I saw him clench his teeth in anger at himself.  
"But I would never ask that of you." I said finally. His shoulders relaxed, but he cocked his head up to look at me in confusion.  
"Dude, it sucked that you weren't hear when my Mum died." I admitted, leaning forward and resting my forearms on my legs. "But wanting you to be stuck back at camp, probably failing in attempts to bring me out of my stubborn depressed stage, when you were meant to be out there exploring the world and doing what you've _always_ wanted to do? That would do neither of us any good."  
"But - I could've helped….I could've done something...anything." He sighed, looking hollow and defeated. I put my hand on his back comfortingly and said.  
"No offense, but if Annabeth couldn't help me until I got away from Camp, neither could you have." I said, patting him on the shoulder. He nodded sadly.

"Did you ever get round to proposing?" I asked, trying to lift the mood. Unfortunately, my question seemed to do the opposite, and Grover's head lowered further and his shoulders sunk.  
"No." He said grumpily, pulling the Juniper's ring, still in it's black box, out of his pocket, and opening it to stare at it in depression.  
"Why not?" I asked, almost offended that he hadn't proposed. It was so obvious that they belonged together, and the fact that they weren't currently engaged pained me.  
"We never went to that bloody garden. Some minor spirits in a crop field a couple of miles away started a riot against the Council of the Cloven Elders, and Juniper and I were asked to go and sort it out. It was easy to calm them down, wheat spirits get themselves into frenzies like this every now and again. But we ended up missing our slot to visit the garden, and had to move onto a new state. Juniper was devastated. " He sighed. "Compared to that garden, nowhere seemed good enough."  
"Once this meeting is over I'm sending you two back to your tour of the country, and you can propose in your own time, when you finally get a free chance to go and visit that garden." I said, standing up and stretching after seizing up after sitting down for so long.  
"What do you mean send us back?" Grover said from behind me, his voice filled with confusion. I turned around to find his face looking hurt and offended.  
"I just mean, don't you want to finish your tour? Aren't you legally bound by the Council? And what about proposing to Juniper, I thought you wanted to do that as soon as possible?" I said quickly, rushing to console my best friend.  
"Not while my friends and family are missing!" He shouted, standing up to face me properly. "All the satyrs are missing, all the demigods are missing, who are my friends too by the way. And there are only four of us left who can do anything about it!"  
"There are all the Gods as well!" I said, trying to defend my original point.  
"And when have they ever lifted a finger to help us? Yes, their children may have gone missing, but how many times before have we been in mortal danger, and they've barely moved an inch to help us?" Grover said harshly, his words cold and brittle. I remained silent, because there was no way to argue against that. He was right.  
"That's right. _They won't help us Percy_." He whispered. Grover had always had a different sort of hate for the Gods from the rest of us. Although us demigods resented our immortal parents for neglecting us, the majority of us couldn't help but love them also. After all, they were our flesh and blood. But Grover, Grover had no moral obligation to the Gods apart from being polite to them so that he didn't get burnt to a crisp.

"I just don't want you to get hurt." I whispered, my voice broken and quiet. Grover looked at me in exasperation, before his features softened.  
"I don't want you to get hurt either, but that doesn't mean I've ever tried to control what battles you fight." He said no unkindly. I nodded solemnly.

"What about Juniper?" I asked curiously. For as long as I'd known her, she'd been quiet and reserved, not exactly a fighter. Grover sighed and ran a hand through his hair tiredly.  
"I have no idea. She has friends who went missing, and she's got a strong heart, so she will probably wants to help." He said, looking confused and hopeless. "But I can't risk her getting hurt." I raised my eyebrow at him, calling him out on his hypocrisy. He punched me lightly in the arm jokingly. "It's different with Juniper, she's never fought a person in her life, let alone picked up a sword or used any of her nature powers to fight. I can't knowingly put her in a situation where we could end up fighting -"  
"So always." I interrupted. Grover sighed and nodded, it was true, we always ended up fighting someone somewhere.  
"And be confident that she wouldn't get hurt….or worse." He finished quietly, gulping at the end as he realised what the consequences of this could actually turn out as if we didn't do it properly.

"I'm guessing Annabeth will be joining us on this quest to find 100 missing Demigods, satyrs, Chiron, a God, Argus, and countless other creatures?" Grover asked jokingly. I grinned.  
"As much as I wished I could convince her otherwise, there's no way in hell Annabeth would stand on the sidelines while her brothers and sisters are missing." I sighed. "But she's my best fighting partner, so there really is no one I'd rather have by my side during these times."

"Any chance of a marriage proposal coming from you anytime soon?" Grover asked with a wicked smile. I frowned at him.  
"Grover, you know I love you, but if you're really committed to Juniper, you can't have me proposing to you at the same time." I said disapprovingly. He huffed at my jokes and shoved me with his shoulder as we began to walk back towards the council room.  
"I mean, is there any chance of you proposing to Annabeth anytime soon?" He clarified for me hopefully. I faked shock.  
"Oh that's what you meant." I laughed, before sobering up and continuing to walk ahead. "I dunno. I love her, and there'll never be anyone else. But after everything we've been through, I think it's something we'll discuss together one day, instead one of us proposing to the other."  
"You never know, she could surprise you with a proposal." Grover suggested. I shook my head with a smile.  
"She knows I'd hate that. Surprises aren't really my thing." I explained, Grover nodded understandingly.

We continued to walk forward, in silence now as we contemplated what on Earth we were going to do about our missing friends. I spotted the garden of Poseidon (which was basically just a large lake surrounded by an elaborately decorated path), and bounded towards it eagerly. It was easily my favourite part of Olympus, and whenever I got the chance, I came to visit it. I kneeled by the side of the lake immediately, digging my hands into the water and pulling them out. I forced the water droplets to weave in and out of my fingers, like leaves dancing in the wind, before bringing them all together to create one water orb, about the size of an orange. I threw and caught it in the air, without actually touching it, moulding it into different shapes in the air. I shaped it into a fish before tossing it back into the lake, creating a splash that left a wet mark on my t-shirt. Without a second thought I waved my hand, casting the the absorbed moisture in my shirt back into the lake.

I noticed an odd silver shimmer drift over the water out of the corner of my eye, and turned my head to look at it properly, but it disappeared too quickly.  
"Hey Grover? Can you come and look at something quickly?" I called out, presuming that Grover was standing behind me. I looked carefully at the water, studying it until the same shimmer appeared again. Only it wasn't a reflection I noticed, more like a silver piece of material moving across the surface of the water. I narrowed my eyes, a sudden foreboding feeling taking over my body. I felt for Riptide in my pocket, wrapping my hand around the metal pen comfortingly.  
"Grover?" I called out again, turning around this time to see where he was. I couldn't see him, and a few quick glances around the evry open paths and lake told me that he wasn't in my Father's Garden. I got up quickly, taking on a fighting stance and pulling riptide out of my pocket. I uncapped it, the full length glinting sword springing from the top immediately. I wrapped my fingers around the leather bound handle firmly, moving towards the gate of the garden slowly. I peeked round the copper metal of the entrance, stepping out of the garden precariously. I continued to move around carefully for another couple of minutes, finding no sign of Grover anywhere. I eventually dropped my fighting stance, when it was apparent that Grover was nowhere to be seen, and swore under my breath. Not only had I managed to lose my best friend after an hour of being back with him, I know had to go back and tell all the Gods, Annabeth and _Juniper_ that Grover was missing, potentially abducted like the rest of the demigods. I could only picture the look on Juniper's face when I told her that I had no idea where her boyfriend was.

Suddenly there was an almighty _thumping_ sound from behind me, and I spun around , my sword now back up in a defensive position to protect myself from whatever had made that unholy noise. Instead, I found an extremely confused looking Grover in a heap on the floor. He sat up slowly, looking around him with a look of complete fear and bewilderment in his eyes. I quickly ran over to him, pulling him up to his feet. Only his hands continued to clutch at my arms after I'd helped him up, and he frantically searched the surrounding area with darting eyes.  
"Grover? What happened mate?" I asked concernedly, his disposition putting me on edge.  
"I couldn't see anything, everything was white, I couldn't even see myself. And there was a hand on my back, but I couldn't shake it off, it wouldn't leave me alone. I was screaming for you but I couldn't hear my own voice." He said in a frenzy, the words spilling out of his mouth without control or sense.  
"Grover...Grover…." I tried to calm him down unsuccessfully.  
"I thought it was taking me away, I couldn't feel the ground. I couldn't feel anything, only that hand on my back." He continued to speak, his sentences disjointed with his anxiety. "It was so silent, I was isolated and there was nothing I could-" he stopped speaking halfway through his sentence, his eyes trained on my shoulder with renowned fear in them. Hsi finger came up to point past me, and that's when I realised he wasn't looking at my shoulder, he was looking _past_ my shoulder, at something behind me. I turned around slowly, dreading having to see what had frozen Grover.

Standing, in the centre of the usually shimmering golden pathway, emitting a pure black shadow on the ground and leaves surrounding it, stood a figure. I say figure because it definitely wasn't human, nor did it have a human shaped body. It didn't have a consistent shape either, it kept changing. Not like from a circle to a triangle to a rectangle, it just kept moving, small and slight movements that somehow changed the entire look of the figure. It was so hard to focus on, my eyes kept moving from side to side, trying to assert a proper place to look. The figure was cloaked in black, a sort of inconsertable shadow that moved and changed with it. It had no face, no eyes or ears or mouth. It had no hands or legs. However, if I looked really hard, concentrating all my energy on seeing through the black shadow that covered it, I could just make out the outline of a vaguely human like figure. It had arms and legs and even a head, though there were still no features on it. It was pure black. Everything within two feet of it had dulled, like the life had been sapped out of them. Even the air seemed to taste stale within my mouth.  
"What are you?" I called out to it, letting Riptide hang freely by my side so that I didn't look like a threat to the figure. Though my hand stayed tight around the hilt.  
"I am Time." A voice in my head said. It was my own voice, as if the figure had somehow controlled my own thoughts to speak to me. I could tell by the way Grover's hands tightened on my arm that he had heard it too.  
"As in Chronos? Father Time?" I asked out loud. We had fought Kronos when I was sixteen, Chronos was a different being. He was the Greek God of Time. Annabeth had forced me to brush up on my Greek mythology knowledge, which meant that I was actually quite good at naming different Gods now. Many philosophers believed that Chronos had become Kronos at some point within mythology, but the unique and sacred books that Olympus and Camp Half-Blood had, told all the stories correctly. Kronos was Chronos' creation in fact, he made Kronos so that he wouldn't have to deal with other beings, leaving Kronos to rule over everything while he disappeared. The Gods had presumed Chronos dead, forgotten by the ages.  
"No." The voice in my head told me. "Chronos was the God of Time. _I am Time._ I consumed my God to become a pure and utter being, free to do my own being without his control."

Grover and I stood in stunned silence. My mind struggled to keep up with his words. Was that even possible? Could time itself be a…..person?

"That's not possible." Grover said from behind me, his voice scared but also confident in his own knowledge. "Time is a construct, created by human beings so that they could fathom a sense of their lives. It's not possible for you to exist. Time cannot….. _be_."  
"It was possible for Chronos, the God of Time, to survive for so long because of the humans' belief in time. In me. They depend so greatly on me, surrounding their whole lives with me in an attempt to make sense of their puny happenings." The voice inside my head explained, emotionless and cold in its ideas. "But recently, the humans have been getting stronger. They're understanding the Universe better than anyone could have ever imagined. Soon, the Gods will be forgotten, replaced by new deities and scientific possibilities they could never have predicted. But me? Time? I will always exist. I hold together the true fabric of reality, and the humans recognise that. They gave me the strength to become _this_ , a true being. Their beliefs in science and knowledge gave me life."

"I was born of humans so that I could rule them. They gave me life because they depend on me. But I cannot rule over them when there are other beings in my way." The voice continued, getting more and more dark. "Therefore I must get rid of those who stop me from fulfilling what I was created to do."

My heart stopped and all the air in my lungs rushed out. The voice went silent for a few seconds, before coming back with an ultimatum that made my blood turn cold.

"It is time for the Gods to end."

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 **What did you think? Remember to comment to tell me how I'm doing. The next chapter may not be for another two weeks, but I'll see how it goes.**


	10. Chapter 8

**Hi Guys! Sorry this update took so long, I'm still in midst of exam season and finding the time to get writing is getting harder and harder. It'll all be over in two weeks and I can get back to concentrating on what I love most.  
In my opinion, this chapter is pretty boring because it's just Percy, Grover, Annabeth and Juniper going over the events of the last chapter, but I hope you enjoy it either way.**

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"So, just to clarify, a shadow managed to abduct Grover, making him invisible, before dropping him back to you-"  
"Quite literally." Grover interrupted, rubbing his back from where he'd been dropped. Annabeth glared at him for cutting her off, and he quickly shut up.  
"Before declaring that he was 'Time', that he and already overpowered Chronos, Father Time, and that he was going to destroy the Gods." She said in disbelief, making air quotes with her hands around the word 'Time'. "And then he just vanished?"  
"Not 'he'." I corrected, running my hand through my hair tiredly. "'It', I could only see a vague human-like figure through it's robes. And it wasn't a shadow, it was physically there, like the physical embodiment of a shadow."  
"Are you sure you didn't drink some hallucogenic water or something? There's some pretty funky stuff on Olympus, stuff that even demigods can't handle." Annabeth asked jokingly.  
"Anna…." I groaned, burying my face into my hands. "This isn't a laughing matter. If you'd been there you'd get it, this is bad. Really bad."  
"Sorry, but can you see where I'm coming from? This literally sounds like you're making it up." She argued. I nodded, before sitting up and trying to take control of the situation.  
"Weirder stuff could happen." I suggested. Annabeth cocked her head to the side.  
"Time is now a person, you've literally just announced a new Greek myth. It can't really get much weirder." She pointed out. I sighed, it was true.

I stood up from the bench in the garden of nature, where we'd found Annabeth and Juniper after the earlier events.  
"We need to tell the Gods." I announced. Annabeth sighed, knowing all too well how the Gods took information like this. They could react in three ways. Option 1 - they would either panic, and order every spirit and soldier they had to guard them while they disappeared to different ends of the earth. Option 2 - they would refuse to believe that someone - no something wanted to destroy them. Otr option 3 - they would believe us, but they would be too damn cocky and self-centered to believe that a being calling themselves 'Time' could overpower them. It was also extremely likely that they would all react in different ways, which was great.  
"You're right." She admitted, before her fingers began tapping her legs extremely quickly, a sign that I recognised as her having an idea. "However, we also don't really know anything about this supposed being. What if it is just all a ruse created by something else?"  
"What are you suggesting?" I sighed, looking down at my adorable girlfriend. She stood up, her height only a few inches shorter than mine, so when she looked up at me I could see the way that she always tilted her head up more than what was necessary for her height.  
"What if we postponed telling the Gods a few days? Enough time for me to do some research on our new enemy Time, and it's origins. See if there actually are any stories out there about it." She said quickly, her brain working faster than her mouth could keep up with.  
"How long do you need?" I asked skeptical, knowing Annabeth, she would probably end up getting caught up in her research and would end up taking a week.  
"Gimme the rest of tonight and tomorrow. If I don't find anything, we have to tell them out of precaution. But if I do find something, it'll make it so much easier to break the news." She decided. I nodded, agreeing with her.  
"Okay. One day, and then we have to tell them." I said, nodding along as a plan began to form in my head. "While you're researching here, do you mind if me and Grover-"  
"Grover and I." Annabeth corrected. I sighed but went along with it.  
"Do you mind if _Grover and I_ go back to Camp Half-Blood? See if we can salvage anything and see if there's anything there that can give us anymore leads?" I asked. Annabeth looked slightly unsure, worrying whether or not Camp Half-Blood was actually safe for us. But, like always, she knew that there was no way that I was going to not go. So, she relented.  
"What if I don't want to go?" Grover piped up from behind us. I turned to look at him quizzically. Honestly, I'd forgotten him and Juniper were there.  
"Eh?" I asked, wondering why on Earth he wouldn't want to go home.  
"Joking. I want to go. You just seemed to forget about us for a minute." Grover said, standing up to meet my height. Juniper stood up with him, as if they were attacked by the hip, and he wrapped his arm around her petite shoulders automatically.  
"Sorry mate. I had a -"  
"Yeah I know - Plan overload." Grover finished for me. It was moments like these that I could appreciate having Grover as a best friend. Firstly, he knew everything about me. Secondly, for most people, knowing everything about me would scare them off. But with Grover, he just took it in his stride. Thirdly, he was fine with telling me when I was being inconsiderate, or a douche. Which was fine with me, everyone needs someone to tell them when they're being an idiot.

I looked at my girlfriend. Although she was still beautiful, it was obvious how tired and overworked she was. After all, we had woke up early this morning to pack, then done a ten hour flight from Italy to home, meaning we were so goddamn jetlagged. Also, it was currently the middle of the night, seeing as we'd landed in the evening. She had dark circles beginning to form under her eyes, and although she was currently excited over the prospect of all the research she was going to get to do, her body language in general showed how tired she was. I too, was looking forward to being able to climb into a bed.  
"We need sleep Wise Girl." I said, poking Annabeth to bring her out of her research induced drift.  
"What? Oh right. Yeah, we do." She agreed grudgingly. "We could go to Paul's place? I'd doubt that he'd mind us crashing for one night?" I shook my head.  
"As much as I desperately want to see Lucy and Paul, I can't risk putting them in any danger by going to see them. I'll just have to wait until all of this is over to visit." I sighed. Annabeth pressed her body into my side comfortingly, and I gratefully wrapped an arm around her. Squeezing her gently to let her know my gratitude.  
"I suppose they'll have to let us stay here for the night." Grover suggested. "After all, you two are the only two demigods who aren't missing. The Gods now have an obligation to try and keep you two safe." Both Annabeth and I agreed with his fail safe knowledge grudgingly.

As we wandered back towards the main Olympus pavilion, the moonlight that shimmered upon everything without there actually being a moon in sight lighting the way for us, I could only help but feel slightly unsettled by the fact that we had to stay here for the night. Although Olympus was a beautiful place, immaculate in design and architecture, and probably the safest place on Earth; there had always been something about it that left me uneasy. Maybe it was because it was so ethereal that it didn't really feel like a real place, maybe it was because it was the place that my Father had hid out for my whole childhood while my Mum and I struggled to survive. I didn't know for sure, but there was always something troubling about this place.

"How do we know this Time thing isn't going to come back tonight? Or that it never left?" Juniper piped up, her small and high voice laced with intelligence and forethinking. I pondered this for a second. Was it possible that Time would come back tonight? I thought of the nature of Time's visit to Olympus. It had snatched Grover form right under my nose, so easily and smoothly, without a hitch or a noise. And it could've killed both of us right there and then, without either of us being able to do a thing about it. But it didn't, it dropped Grover back to the ground, and simply delivered it's message.  
"I think" I said slowly. "That Time wasn't here to do any damage. It took Grover so easily and smoothly, it could have killed both of us in a second and no one could have done anything about it." All three of them looked at me in horror, the reality of the situation beginning to sink in. " _But it didn't_. It dropped Grover to the ground and simply spoke to us. It never came here to do any damage, it never wanted to hurt anyone. It simply wanted to tell us what was happening. It wanted to _warn_ us."  
"What if it was warning us so that we would know what was killing us when it comes back alter tonight to strangle us?" Grover suggested helpfully. Juniper hit him in the side at his annoyingly valid idea.  
"I don't think it wanted to do anything. I think it just wanted to get our attention." I said slowly, my eyes not focusing on my friends in front of me because all I could think of was the phantom's speech.  
"What do you mean? Why would it need our attention? And what would it be warning us about?" Juniper asked, her voice unreasonably calm seeing as her boyfriend had been kidnapped an hour ago.  
"The missing demigods." Annabeth breathed, realisation dawning on her face. She looked up and her eyes met mine, instantly I knew that she'd put the same pieces that I had together. And seeing as it was Annabeth, she'd probably already gone further than I had. I nodded solemnly. Seeing as the events with the mysterious phantom had ruptured the middle of our processing that all our friends and family were missing. We'd forgotten about them for a few fleeting minutes that should have been replaced with a sense of calm and peace; instead it was simply filled with another problem.

"You think that he took everyone?" Grover asked, his eyebrows scrunched up as he too began to understand.  
"It seems too much of a coincidence otherwise." I answered with a shrug. "The whole of Camp Half-Blood goes missing and this supposed 'Time' thing shows up all within twelve hours? They've got to be linked."  
"It would make sense." Annabeth said, her eyes not focused on us but on something in the distance. "Time said it wanted to destroy the Gods. What better way to eliminate the one thing that might stop it from getting what it wants, than to kidnap them?"  
"But it messed up. It missed the four people who weren't in Camp Half-Blood at the time." Juniper finished.  
"Or did it miss us?" I asked. "Hear me out. If it had missed us out, surely it would have just come straight back after us to get rid of everything in its way? It had both me and Grover in the palm of it's hand. It could have taken us and the Gods would never have known. I mean for Zeus' sake, it got into Olympus somehow!"  
"What are you saying. That it left us out, on purpose?" Grover asked. I nodded.  
"Think about it. Grover, how dramatic was Time?" I asked. "It wanted to explain itself to someone, it needed someone to know what it's going to do. Time wants to destroy the Gods, but it doesn't want to do it quickly and smoothly without a fuss, it wants an audience. It wants the full glory and prestige of war."  
"Oh Gods. He's right." Annabeth said, looking at me with a haunting sense of understanding. "Look at us!" She exclaimed. "Two demigods, a satyr, and a nymph. We're literally a representative of everyone who was affected by Time earlier today. Percy and I; we represent all the demigods that were taken. And we're the oldest demigods at camp, this means the most to us, because that's been our home for the longest. Grover; you represent all the satyrs that were taken. Satyrs have been at Camp Half-Blood as long as demigods have, it's just as much my home as it is yours. And Juniper, although the wood and water nymphs weren't taken, it's your home too that was burnt to the ground. If the demigods aren't there, Camp Half-Blood may eventually fade away in the same way the Gods will if they're forgotten. The nymphs could fade away too."

There was a slight pause as we let what Annabeth had said sink in.  
"We've all got something to fight for." Juniper said, her eyes wide but not perturbed by this.  
"Time wants a challenge." I said, swallowing at what was suddenly staring us straight in the face.

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 **I know this chapter was pretty short compared to the usual, but what did you think? Remember to review and tell me!  
Look out for the next chapter soon!**


	11. Chapter 9

**And we're back!**

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Jason POV

Groggily, I sat up, rubbing the side of my head as I tried to dissolve the pulsing pain that was currently inhabiting my brain. I groaned, stretching out shoulders as my eyes adjusted to the dim light of wherever I was. I began to recognise the outlines of people around me, all sitting and up talking in hushed whispers.  
"He's awake." Someone called out, their voice familiar and tired. There was a sudden scramble as everyone circled me, peering down at me still half lying on the floor anxiously. I began to recognise some faces, Nico and his Will, who was head of the Apollo cabin and infirmary, and was currently checking my pulse. Clarisse, Leo, the Stoll twins, Annabeth's brother Michael - and Piper. Out of all the faces, her's looked most concerned, but also the most amused.  
"Why am I always the one to get knocked out?" I mumbled as I sat up properly, my eyes adjusted to the light well enough now that I could see clearly. Around me the demigods let out a low level of chuckles, and I focused on Piper as she knelt down in front of me. The demigods around me were blocking out enough of our surroundings so that all I could see was black above us. But I was warm and I was sitting on a wooden floor, so I knew we were inside.  
"Do you remember anything?" She asked, her voice soft but strong. There were three scratches on the side of her face, and I tenderly reached up to touch them, frowning as I wondered how they could have got there. She caught my hand before it got to her face, bringing it down to simply hold it, her thumb stroking over my fingers gently.  
"Don't get your hopes up." Will mumbled under his breath from beside me, I frowned at him but he simply looked at me. Maybe this pulsing thing in my head was worse than I thought. I tried to think back to the last thing I remembered, but all I could think of was when we'd Iris messaged Percy the other night. Anything between then and now was gone.  
"I remember Iris messaging Percy?" I said half-heartedly, knowing that Piper was going to be disappointed with my lack of memory. "But I have a feeling that that was at least a day ago. So after that, I have no idea what happened." Will and Piper both sighed, looking at each other worriedly.  
"That was two days ago, we Iris messaged Percy and Annabeth for a final time before they came home from their holiday. You spent the remainder of the day training, then you went to the campfire with the rest of us and went to bed. Yesterday morning, you woke up, had a heads of cabins meeting about going to collect Percy and Annabeth and any changes to the camp. Just as we were about to set off to collect them, a dark black tornado came sweeping into camp, destroying everything in its path, and setting things alight. Anyone it touched got swept away to here, until all of us ended up here. You've been out for six hours Jason." Will told me gently, trying not to shock me with his calming impartial doctors voice. I frowned, trying to take in this foreign information that I had no recollection of.  
"How did I get knocked out?" I asked, trying to fit the pieces together.  
"You were trying to control the tornado." Piper answered for me, her other hand rubbing my leg soothingly as I processed everything. "But you were struggling and ended up getting hit by a branch that had been caught in the storm." Her hand lightly settled on the side of my head, causing me to hiss as I felt the sting of the wound.  
"So camp's….?" I asked quietly, my voice sounding weak and vulnerable. Piper's eyes hardened and everybody else either shifted awkwardly or looked away from me. Even Nico couldn't bare to look me in the eye.  
"Virtually destroyed." Clarisse answered, seeing as nobody else was going to speak to me. Her voice wavered, but she managed to keep it strong, her eyes not glancing away from my face. I nodded carefully, trying to keep the emotions in as I learned that my home of nearly four years was gone.

"So…..what now? Do we know where we are? Or what that tornado was?" I coughed, trying to keep my composure and act like one of the oldest and most experienced demigods I was. Nico answered this time.  
"We know we're in some sort of room? Pretty big, fits all of us in here comfortably, pretty warm, wooden floor, no furnishing, but it's clean which says something for the housekeeping here." Next to him Will cracked a smile, and Nico's face lit up as he delighted in amusing his boyfriend. "We did a headcount, all 136 demigods are here. As well as every satyr except from Grover. The nymphs and spirits weren't taken with us. But Chiron, Argus and Dionysus were also in camp at the time the tornado thing happened, and none of them are here. All we've got are our clothes, weapons didn't come here with us." I frowned, fumbling for my pocket with desperate hands. "And we checked, even your Roman coin didn't make it." I let out a tight breath, I wasn't used not not having the familiar weight of it in my pocket, and it made me nervous to know it was missing.  
"I thought there were 134 demigods in Camp Half-Blood?" I asked confusedly, wondering who the extra two were.  
"Frank and Hazel are visiting from Camp Jupiter." Piper explained softly, concern written all over her face. "Do you remember that?"  
"Think so." I lied, though it was pointless because I was a useless liar and they all saw through me immediately.  
"They're somewhere over there." Piper said, gesturing behind me, I turned my head to try and spot them, but there were a lot of nervous satyrs and chattering demigods blocking my view and I gave up. "Hazel's trying to find a way to break through the wall with magic. I don't think she's getting very far." I sighed, beginning to push myself up so that I could try and be of some help. Instead Will pushed me back down, his hand staying on my shoulder restrictively. I frowned, looking to Piper for help, but her face matched Will's and I knew that there was no way I was going to be allowed up.  
"C'mon." I whined, looking to Nico for help, but he was just as on Nico's side. "I might be able to help!"  
"You stand up, all the blood is going to rush to your head and you're gonna faint. You're better on the floor, trust me." Will informed me helpfully.  
"What if I can get through the wall with lightning or destroy it with a storm?" I suggested, trying to come up with some ways that I could help us get out of here. Nico shook his head sadly, but Clarisse looked like she was trying to hold back a laugh.  
"I'm pretty sure that whatever this place is, is somehow enchanted to stop our powers from working." Nico sighed, proving it to me, he clicked his fingers. A mini skeleton appeared in his palm, but it took one step and crumbled to black dust. Experimentally, I tried to conjure up some wind from my hand, instead a breath of air flew towards Piper, not so much as making her hair move. I sighed, and flopped back on to the floor. Clarisse laughed bitterly, shaking her head at us.  
"You lot rely on your powers too much. Now you know what it feels like to fight with only your strength and wit." She pointed out bitterly, a genuine but sad smile covering her face.

"What about your charmspeak?" I asked Piper curiously, as that was harder power to control. She simply shook her head, not looking particularly sad or surprised.  
"And no one's injured?" I asked concernedly. Will shook his head.  
"A couple of bruises and bumps, but you've got the worst injury out of all of us." He admitted. I sighed, mumbling to myself about how typical that was. Piper and Nico chuckled at my morose mood.  
"So what? We just sit here and wait for something to happen?" I asked. Everyone around me nodded, obviously already having had a meeting about this. For about the hundredth time, I sighed, feeling pretty useless.

The not being able to go and comfort or help anyone was worse than the not knowing what was going to happen. If I was on my feet I could defend my fellow demigods easily, lying on the floor, I was the one that everyone else had to protect. It felt pretty shit to be honest.

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 **Bit of a confession to make, hit a rough patch during exam period and stopped writing for this story. So, a million apologies to my readers who were patiently waiting for me to continue. I know that this is an extra short chapter, but for a comeback, I quite like it. I'm going to try and update again next week, but we'll see how it goes.  
Also, go give some love to my other story 'Scars Don't Fade', which is about Nico and his new girlfriend (Hallie), who is coincidentally also a daughter of Apollo. I've got nothing against Will, but I began to write this story before Will was revealed as Nico's love interest, and I liked my story idea too much to change it.  
Remember to leave a review!**


	12. Chapter 10

**Just to recap, last time we left off with Percy and Annabeth, they had just learnt that their new enemy was Time, the physical embodiment of the fabric of existence. This chapter begins the day after.**

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Percy POV

After a restless night, in which I'm pretty sure I got about a full thirteen minutes of sleep, Juniper and I left for Camp Half-Blood. We'd eventually decided that Grover would be a better help in researching (after all, he had spent a year trying to find Pan), and Juniper would be a better help in trying to get some information out of the wood nymphs. They were more likely to talk to her than they were to me.

Just as we were about to leave, and planning to travel by taxi to camp, a messenger found us with a note from Hades. He was offering to shadow travel us there. Now, I'd only shadow travelled roughly three times, and none of them were experiences I wanted to relive, and Juniper didn't really seem so keen on the idea either. But it was quicker and safer than us having to do the hour commute from Olympus to Camp Half-Blood, and we were both eager to get there without hassle. So we agreed. Apparently the messenger was one of Hades' minions, because the moment we agreed to do it he clicked his fingers, and a cloud appeared above us, blocking out the sun and leaving us in a little circle of darkness. I closed my eyes, and let my body be dragged through what felt like a tunnel of cold wind, before arriving outside the camp borders. I let out a breath I'd been holding in and opened my eyes, relieved to find that Juniper was still next to me. She looked slightly more green than normal, but nodded reassuringly to me, and so I led us on through the camp borders and back home.

"Just a warning, it really does look like a war zone." I mentioned as we wandered through the forest. Apparently all of the wood nymphs and spirits were still to shell-shocked to come out of their trees, and so we continued on, towards the main part of camp.  
"Don't worry, Annabeth warned me this morning." Juniper sighed. "I am thoroughly prepared for anything."  
"Just keep in mind that no one's dead." I reminded her, probably sounding more like I was trying to convince myself than her. "Hades has guards on every underworld entrance, and none of the demigods have come through the normal entrance or any secret ones. They're not dead, they're just missing."

We stepped out of the tree line and for the first time, Juniper saw the devastation that had been released on our home. Even though I'd seen it the day before, it was still a shock to the system. Mentally, I reminded myself ten times over that no one, except for the Pegasi, had been harmed. Although, who knew what was happening to the demigods and satyrs right now. I looked over to find Juniper's face stony and cold. It was a pure hatred that I hadn't thought her capable of, but war changed people and Juniper wasn't the same person she'd been six years ago.

For a few more seconds we stood still, staring out at the field that had once been filled with laughing, safe teenagers. Now it was just a wreckage site, leftovers of a catastrophe we had missed. Juniper began to walk towards the camp slowly, taking in the burnt cabins and litter of objects on the ground. Silently, I followed after her, watching as she walked among the rubble that was once half of the Big House.  
"What could've done this?" Juniper asked, her voice wavering as she turned back round to me and gestured towards the rubble she was standing in the middle of.  
"I don't know." I sighed ashamedly, wishing I had a better answer. She shook her head tiredly, rubbing a hand across her eyes.  
"I'm gonna go talk to my sisters." She sighed, looking determined as she began to walk back towards the woods. "It's probably best if you're not here for this. They're quite shy." I nodded understandingly and let her wander off into the forest.

Not knowing how long she'd be, I began to sort through some more of the rubble in the camp, looking for any clues as to what, or who, could have caused this mess. The day before, I had avoided checking what the leftovers of my cabin looked like, mostly because it was on fire, but also because I couldn't face seeing my home for the past twelve years reduced to dust. Now that the fire's had all gone out though, I couldn't avoid it.

Three quarters of the Poseidon cabin were now a selection of different sized stone lumps on the ground. I could see shards of my wooden bed sticking out from beneath a particularly large lump of rock, along with half of my bedside cabinet littered on the ground. I stepped inside what was left of my cabin, unknowingly searching for a particular object. After a few minutes of rummaging around, I found it. My camp half-blood necklace. I'd taken it off when my mum had died, feeling betrayed by the Gods and insulted by my own heritage. I'd forgotten to put it back on before Annabeth and I left for France, and so I was almost longing for the familiar feel of it around my neck again. It had twelve beads now, the earlier ones a bit more scratched and worn than the newer ones. I tied it round my neck, eagerly, relaxing finally. I scoured my room a bit more, collecting a few of mine and Annabeth's possessions and putting them in a bag to bring back with us. Eventually, I heard Juniper shouting my name, so I left the cabin and wen to find her.

She'd returned from the forest, her face slightly more confused and worried than it had been previously, which didn't exactly reassure me.  
"What did they say?" I asked breathlessly when I reached her.  
"Not much." She sighed, looking more tired than before. "They're still too scared to come out of their trees, however, I can confirm that it was a _what_ rather than a who that destroyed camp. Apparently, a sudden dark storm, almost a tornado, appeared over camp within seconds. Anyone it touched disappeared instantly, and it got _everyone_. Even Jason couldn't calm the storm down. Once everyone was gone, lightning bolts rained down, setting things on fire, even stone, and the winds swept up the weapons on the ground and sent them flying towards the Pegasi. It was hell."

I scrubbed my hands over my face, taking in the devastating information she'd just relayed to me.  
"Okay." I began, trying to compose myself so that I was ready to try and sort this all out. "Well the description of a dark storm does match what Grover and I saw of Time last night. All pitch black." I sighed, trying to remember everything I'd been taught about the Greek myths. "So let's say that Time _is_ behind this. That means that he somehow has control over the weather? Or he's got a supporter who can drum up a storm like that?"

"Percy, there are so many different ideas you could come up with right now. And the probability is that none of them are going to be right." Juniper reminded me, playing the voice of reason. "There's no point trying to build an idea of basically no information."  
"What are the chances that Annabeth and Grover have found anything?" I asked, trying to gage her opinion on all of this. She shrugged.  
"If they're going to find anything on a Greek myth no one's ever heard of, then they've gone to the right place at least. The Athenian library is probably their best chance of finding anything useful." She reasoned. I nodded, trying to keep my cool and not panic. "Percy?" She said hesitantly, beginning to sense that I did not have a handle on my emotions right now. I sat down on one of the rocks that had once been a part of the Zeus cabin.  
"We literally know nothing about this Time thing, and every single one of our friends is missing, even Chiron. Time managed to kidnap a God for Poseidon's sake!" I vented, burying my face in my hands, so there was no guarantee that Juniper had understood anything I'd been saying.  
"C'mon." She said softly, putting one of her small hands on my shoulder. "Worrying isn't going to help anyone. Let's go back to Olympus and see what Annabeth and Grover have found." I let out a short laugh.  
"You sound like my…..Mum." I only realised what that sentence meant once I got to the end of it, and Juniper couldn't help but look at me pityingly. I sighed and shook my head, standing up and trying to get rid of the intruding thoughts in my head.  
"Yeah. Let's go." I said confidently, trying to sound as though I had my shit together. I plastered a fake smile on my face, thinking that I looked mildly sane in my head. Instead she laughed at my bad attempt at being put together and began to walk back up the hill. Sighing, I followed her. This was going to be a long journey back.

Nico POV

"So…...do you think they'll try and starve us out? Or do you think we'll get food eventually?" My bored boyfriend suddenly asked nonchalantly. I raised my eyebrows at him curiously.  
"What?" He asked. "It's a valid question! Just because no one else was asking it doesn't mean I can't." Will insisted. I shook my head at him, trying to keep my laughter from appearing.  
"Supplying food for 136 demigods and 25 satyrs is _a lot_ of food." I noted, looking at the multitude of demigods who had now fallen asleep. The lights were just as artificially bright as when we'd first arrived, but the majority of us were exhausted. So we were taking it in turns to take watches while other slept. Will and I were one of ones to taking the first watch.  
"So they go through all that trouble to kidnap everyone? And then just let us die?" Will pondered frowning. He was pretty adorable right now, tired and droopy but still as astute as ever.  
"Or they're using us as bait?" I suggested. "Percy and Annabeth aren't here with us, and nor are the hunters or Amazons, or the Romans for that matter, so obviously only the people inside of Camp Half-Blood got taken, to here at least. So maybe we're a trap. It's hardly like Percy and Annabeth will _not_ come and find us once they find out we were kidnapped from out own home."  
"And that our home has been virtually destroyed." Will added helpfully.  
"Thanks for reminding me." I sighed, patting his leg. He beamed at me mockingly.  
"Happy to be of service."

"We're going to be okay aren't we?" Will asked tenderly, genuine fear in his eyes now. It was very rare that I got to see my boyfriend scared, not that I was disappointed about that. Every now and then I saw the fear in his eyes, hidden by the composure he put on whenever I had a night terror, left over from my time in Tartarus. He always did the best he could to calm me down, but he understood so little about that time I'd spent in there, and I wasn't the best explainer. Percy had tried to explain it to him once, but it was too difficult, too raw and unnerving to speak about out loud. Not yet at least. But Will also had night terrors, rarer than I did, but they happened. Mostly they were fuelled by his own guilt. The guilt he felt over all the deaths he felt he should have been able to prevent. Will was head of the infirmary throughout both wars, and so it came down to him every time a demigod was injured. And he took it as his own fault every time a demigod died. Six months after the war with gaia was over, he'd disappeared for a day, and when he came home, he had gotten his first tattoo. Twenty two names up the inside of his arm, each one the name of a demigod who had died.

As Will spoke, I ran my fingers gently up and down those names, noting with care Silena Beauregard, Charles Beckendorf, Michael Frain (one of Annabeth's brothers who had died during the battle at Camp Half-Blood during the war with Gaia). Since then no we had had no deaths, but I knew Will feared the day he'd have to add a new name to that list.  
"We always make it through." I sighed, taking his hand firmly in mine and giving it a tight squeeze.  
"Yeah but normally we have weapons and demigods whose powers work." He reminded me. Again.  
"Thank you, again, Will, for that kind reminder." I replied with a chuckle. He grinned, giving me a quick peck on the lips.  
"I think it's literally the only purpose I serve in life." He commented, nodding thoughtfully. I nodded in agreement. "Seriously though." Will sighed, his smile dropping and his eyes turning to me sincerely. "We've survived so much, surely at some point we've got to fall?" I tilted my head at him, frowning. It wasn't like Will to be so negative. If he was losing hope, then Gods knew what everybody else was thinking.  
"Nah. We're going to live till we're ninety five and then die peacefully in our sleep." I countered, staring at him surely.  
"Be serious Nico." He pleaded, his eyes growing desperate.  
"I am being serious." I insisted, squeezing his hand gently. "I plan to live to be very old in a little cottage with you by the seas. No monsters or annoying twelve year olds who can't hold a sword properly. Just me and you, and maybe a dog. No sweeping black tornado or new deity with a vendetta against us is going to get in the way of that"  
"How can you be so positive?" He asked, genuine confusion on his face. I brought his hand up to my face and pressed a kiss to it, trying to remind him how much he meant to me.  
"Because I have faith. In you, in us, in every single person in this room right now." I murmured, looking straight into his eyes so he couldn't avoid me. "We've survived two wars together, I'll be damned if it's a third one that gets us." He sighed and looked genuinely beaten. I wrapped an arm around him and pulled him into my side, letting him rest his head on my shoulder.

"I love you." I reminded him, pressing a kiss to his golden head.  
"Ditto." He sighed, forcing a smile out of me.

"We swapped roles." Will noted after a minutes silence.  
"What do you mean?" I murmured.  
"I've become the depressing one with no hope and you're the reassuring completely hopeful one." He explained, sounding tired but amused. "We've swapped." I chuckled, loving being the optimistic one for a change.  
"I didn't know you were a dog person." Will said out of the blue suddenly. Peering up at me. I snorted and shook my head.  
"Get some rest you idiot." I chuckled, letting him snuggle into me.  
"Who you calling idiot?" He yawned, both of his arms wrapping around my waist. "I've saved your life like twenty times."  
"Sure sure." I mumbled to appease him, hoping he'd rest up.

I looked down at the blonde boy resting on my shoulder and couldn't help but send a prayer to the Gods thanking them for allowing me to live my life alongside him. I could already sense, as could most of us, that this was going to be a new war, we'd have to fight and risk our lives all over again.

So if there was another possibility we were to die, I'd not choose anyone else to die alongside.

Hazel POV

"If we get out of this alive, will you marry me?" Frank whispered suddenly, his low voice echoing around my head and causing all other noises to go silent. I blinked in shock.  
"What?" I managed to squeak, turning to look at him. We had been sitting back to back, using each other to rest on as we silently watched the Greek demigods around us fall asleep. He shook his head, his eyes falling to the floor as he lost all the confidence he'd had a moment ago.  
"Ignore me." My boyfriend mumbled, attempting to turn away from me.  
"Oh nuh huh." I objected, catching him by the shoulder. He sighed and looked back up at me, the embarrassment on his face causing me to melt. "C'mon Frank, just say it." I whispered, hoping he would divulge what he was thinking to me. He paused nervously for a moment before taking a deep breath and speaking.  
"I was just….I was thinking - maybe." He sighed and shook his head, clearing his thoughts before speaking properly this time. "You and I can both feel that this is going to be another war." I nodded, though unhappily, in agreement. "And I know we're young, and it's probably a terrible idea, but I just don't want to fight for everything all over again without knowing that you're going to be there with me on the other side."

I frowned as I took this in. I had only just turned eighteen, and Frank was now twenty one. People were usually shocked when they found out there was a three year age gap between us, and this was much worse back when we'd just started dating, because I was thirteen and he was sixteen. But the truth was I was actually _a lot_ older, thanks to good old Dad.  
"Is the fact that I'm in love with you not a good enough promise that I'll be next to you at the end of this war?" I asked confusedly. "And we're so young, I don't want to rush into doing something we might later regret." I sighed and squeezed my eyes shut, realising what I'd just said. "Not that I would regret marrying you - I just"  
"No I get what you mean." Frank thankfully sighed, allowing me to breath in relief. "Just forget I said anything." I pondered this thoughtfully, trying to imagine what being his _wife_ rather than his girlfriend would be. For one, the talk back at camp would be ridiculous, the elders already gave Frank enough crap for dating someone younger than him. ON the other hand, I already planned to spend the rest of my life with Frank, what was the difference in finalising it a few years earlier than expected?  
"Survive the war with me and then we'll properly talk about it." I suggested, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. A grateful grin appeared on his face, and he pulled my against him fondly.

"Do you think everyone at Camp Jupiter's alright?" Frank asked me, his voice tight as he thought about our family back home. He'd placed his praetor cap back on, and rubbed his arm comfortingly as he worried about all the demigods he was responsible for.  
"Reyna's probably already got them drilling attack formations and the correct weapons to use in different situations." I answered, trying to lighten the mood. he snorted, but his 'worry' face quickly returned.  
"So you don't think they're in a similar position to what we're in then?" He asked, looking me dead in the eye. I shook my head easily, because I'd already thought about this.  
"I don't." I said confidently, hoping to restore his own confidence with my words. "Out of the two camps, Camp Half-Blood is the weaker one. They have under 200 people living there, we have over 600. And even if you kidnapped all the demigods under thirty, there would still be four hundred adults and quarter-gods left over."  
"It would just be too difficult to remove that many people from a place in one go." Frank summarised. "So you _do_ think that they're using us as bait then?" Frank and I had discussed different theories about why in Hades' name we would have been kidnapped without any warning. I shrugged.  
"Honestly, it feels like the most likely option at this point. Only the demigods and satyrs have been kidnapped, leaving all the nymphs and spirits, as well as Grover, Juniper, Percy and Annabeth not being brought here. And there's a whole council of Gods with missing children, as well as a whole camp's worth of powerful Roman demigods ready to fight for us."  
"That's if the senate allows Reyna to set up a search for us." Frank pointed out. "They've never been that supportive of our ties to Camp Half-Blood."  
"True." I sighed.  
"How'd you know that whoever put us here just didn't realise that the other four weren't in camp at the time?" He suggested, causing me to shake my head.  
"Someone who can make a black tornado transport over a hundred people without harming them, is too clever to not realise that they missed two of our most powerful demigods, the leader of the council of cloven elders and a nymph." I explained, regrettably admitting how powerful our kidnapper probably was.  
"So you think whoever our kidnapper is left those four out on purpose? Made sure they attacked when they weren't home?" He asked, the light beginning to come on in his eyes as he got where I was going with this.  
"It's possible. Leave out the four who have the most to fight for. Camp Half-Blood has been Percy and Annabeth's home for over ten years now, leaving this to the Gods to fix is not an option. Grover's responsible for every satyr who's currently here with us, and Juniper's brothers and sisters were probably injured too during the attack." I suggested, thinking out loud mostly as new ideas popped into my head.  
"The four people who have the most to fight for." Frank clarified forebodingly, making me shiver at the reality of his words. We really were going to war. "But we still have no idea who or what our kidnapper is, or why they kidnapped us. We're going to be fighting in an unknown war."  
"Yeah, admittedly we are missing some of the crucial details." I sighed, collapsing against him as I found myself tired after the stressful day. or night, it was impossible to tell really.

All I wanted was to go home, to sleep in my own bed, wake up and eat breakfast with Frank. Do my duties, get some magic practice in, then shower and eat and spend some more time with Frank. I wanted my usual routine day back at Camp Jupiter. Gods knew what the Romans were doing now. Reyna was probably attempting to authorise a search party for us, and the senate were probably doing their best to counter that. Even though two of their own were missing, and one of those two were their praetor, they would never be fond enough of the Greeks to want to save them. It was a vicious rivalry, one that we were finding it hard to get rid of.

Yet here we were, trying to stay awake so that we could keep watch for the Greek demigods while they slept, and we could all stay alive against an enemy we weren't aware existed. After the war with Gaia, I had thought that our trouble was over. Of course, no such luck. We had had four pretty good years though, successful quests, no attacks or threats from monsters with vendettas against us. There were so many new demigods who didn't have PTSD or night terrors, that people were beginning to get used to peace again. We no longer expected to be woken up by the sound of clashing swords and screaming demigods.

One day we'd achieve that peace again. But first, we had a war to win.

* * *

 **Personally, this was one of my favourite chapters yet, and I really enjoyed writing the scene between Nico and Will.  
Once again, remember to leave a review!**


	13. Chapter 11

**Here we go, this is a little chapter, though the end does reveal some very interesting information.**

* * *

Reyna POV

Fuming, I marched myself out of the senate before I ended up saying something I would later regret. Unfortunately for the Greek demigods, the majority of the senators and the generals of the five cohorts had been against my proposition that we should send out a search party for them. In their eyes, the Greeks were not worth risking Roman lives. In my opinion, they were very worth risking Roman lives, seeing the trouble we caused them when Octavian and some other misguided senators decided to attack their camp, _without_ mine or Frank's permission. Admittedly they had not been able to contract either of us at the time. But the fact that they attacked a fellow camp of demigods remained. Even though Frank Zhang, the other praetor of Camp Jupiter, and his girlfriend Hazel Levesque, another Roman daughter of Pluto, were also missing with the Greeks, the senate were still refusing to send out a search party. Not even for their own fellow soldiers. For their own blood. I'd known what they outcome of today's senate meeting would be before it had started, as few of the senior senators were in favour of Franks praetorship, despite him being a loyal and intelligent leader, better than myself. But I had been filled with rage at the sheer number of senators who had not wanted to authorise a search party. it was more than I had expected.

Yesterday, we had received an unexpected Iris message from Percy, Annabeth, a satyr and a nymph. I had known that Percy and Annabeth were returning from their holiday that day, as that was why Frank and Hazel had left for Camp Half-Blood the day before. However, I had not expected to have the whole of the camps dinner interrupted by Percy and Annabeth appearing on one of the mess tents walls. Of course, the Greeks were all about organised chaos, rather than simple _organisation_. In front of every single Roman demigod currently enrolled in one of the five cohorts, they relayed to me how all 134 of the Greek demigods, Hazel and Frank, their leader Chiron and the God Dionysus had been kidnapped from the camp that afternoon, as well as the fact that their home now lay in ruins, and their animals slaughtered. To say that it wasn't an emotional conversation would be a lie, and the confusion and pure fury that had been coursing through the two at the time had been apparent to everyone. Grimly, they had told us how their Gods had been quick to consider us as being to blame for the crime, which was why they were contacting us in secret. At that, a series of harsh indignant whispers had flowed through the tent, and to be honest I couldn't blame my fellow Romans for that. It was insulting to say the least, though not entirely surprising. Though from the way that Annabeth had told us that through gritted teeth, showed us that not all the Greeks thought of us in that way. We still had some allies.

My first question had been whether or not they'd believed if whoever had kidnapped the Greeks would come for us too. Truthfully, they had had no idea, and so the guard rotation had been doubled immediately. So far, there had been no attacks, though there was no arguing that my demigods weren't uneasy at the uncertainty of everything. They had no leads on who had destroyed their camp and kidnapped their family, but were going back to the camp the following day to speak to the remaining nymphs there to see if they could provide any help.

So after all of that, the senate were on the defensive rather than the offensive, which had never really been the Roman way in my opinion, and so my current frustration at the senators was understandable in my opinion. It was reaching dusk now, the setting sun leaving an orange glow on the hills of our camp. As I walked past the children of Mars, still training, their swords a familiar sound as they clashed against each other, I remembered a time when we had a curfew for these sort of things, when training was simply a pretence for a dangerous moment which few demigods would actually encounter. But the two wars had left many of us scarred, and now the familiarity of a sword in our hands was the only thing that kept us sane.

The moment I reached my private cabin, and slumped down in the chair at my desk, a thousand enquiries from different Romans living in the camp piled high on my desk, staring me in the face, the shimmering image of an Iris message appeared behind them. Frantically, I shoved the letters aside, allowing me to better see the tired face of Annabeth Chase.  
"Any more news?" I asked frantically, not even bothering to exchange pleasantries. They were wasted on people like me and Annabeth in times like these. We were warriors first, friends second. Thankfully, she nodded, and a breath of relief fell out of me. We were getting somewhere.  
"A considerable amount has happened since last night actually." She sighed, rubbing a hand over her weary face before launching into her story. After she explained the whole 'Time' thing, which thoroughly confused me, Percy took over, explaining his and Juniper's (who I had recently learnt was Grover's girlfriend, whom I had never met but had heard many stories of from Percy) day back at their ruined camp.

"So, essentially, the physical embodiment of 'Time'" I tried to sum up, holding my fingers in the air as quotation marks when I said 'Time'. ", not mistaking him for the Greek God of Time, Chronos, has kidnapped all of the Greek demigods, knowingly leaving you four out because he wants a challenge, as well as somehow using a black storm to destroy Camp Half-Blood. All because he wants to destroy the Gods and become the ruler of the world." In front of me, Percy and Annabeth nodded. I sighed burying my face in my hands in annoyance. This only further proved that there was going to be a third war for us to fight.  
"Okay." I said, trying to compose myself and get things sorted. "So we know who our enemy is, but not where the demigods are?" Again, Percy and Annabeth nodded. "Does that mean that Chronos is dead then? Gone forever?"  
"Time said that he had 'consumed' Chronos, so presumably, yes, Chronos is dead." Percy answered with a shrug, looking only slightly taken aback by this realisation. Time had destroyed a Titan, the three of us knew through experience that that was no easy feat.  
"Well at least there's no longer a Roman God of Time, we defeated Saturn, and unlike your Gods, he had no counterpart. So that leaves us with only one enemy to defeat." I thought out loud, relieved as I thought it through to find that there was no chance of us having to worry about a Roman Time coming to finish us off.  
"Thank goodness for that." Percy muttered sarcastically under his breath. I raised a single arched eyebrow to him, and he cowered slightly, straightening and coughing to ease the tension.

"Okay. So, what can we do to help?" I asked plainly. Percy was more informed on this case than I was, and as much as I wanted to go ahead and start planning searches to find the missing demigods, I needed to let Percy head this one up.  
"Honestly, the most you can do is try to work out who Time may have alliances with? Creating huge black storms doesn't really seem like the sort of skill he'd have. He must have someone working with him - or for him." He suggested nonchalantly. For the first time, I noticed how tired he was, the bags under his eyes and worn out look to his face. Out of everyone that was missing, I knew about eight of them roughly. Percy and Annabeth knew all of them. This was probably the hardest thing they'd had to endure, and so soon after his mother's death. I'd experienced hardship in my life before. But _this_ , I could only imagine what he was going through.  
"I'll see what I can do." I answered, nodding my head.  
"Any luck with the senate on sending out a search party?" He asked, his eyes lighting up as he remembered what I'd offered. Obviously the grimace on my face appeared too quickly, because his face immediately dropped.  
"I did my best Percy, but they're not willing to risk the safety of the camp yet, not after Gaia. It's too soon, even if two of our own are missing." I admitted, burying my face in my hands in shame. "I'm not giving up though, there are demigods here who have friends, people they consider family, at Camp Half-Blood. Eventually the senate won't be able to ignore that. Though I don't know how soon that will be."  
"Don't worry, the hunters are already throwing everything they've got at this and so far they're having no luck. Thalia's frantic." He reminded me. "If the hunters are having trouble the I'm not sure how much more luck you'd have."  
"Either way, we should be able to search for missing family." I countered, to which he could do nothing but nod in agreement. "I'm going to call Hylla next." I announced, attempting to give him some more hope. "Hopefully I can convince her that it's in her best interest to find the Greeks. Not really sure how convincing that'll be to her, but I've got a few favours I can call in if need be."  
"Thanks Reyna." He sighed, shaking his head at everything. "Don't worry if she won't, I'm not really sure if we should be searching anyway."  
"Pardon?" I stammered in disbelief, the shock obviously showing in my voice because he looked up quickly, his eyes bright and hesitant.  
"No - no! I didn't mean it like that!" I stuttered, trying to reassure me that he still wanted to find his demigods.  
"Well then what did you mean?" I asked hurriedly. There were still a hundred things I had to do after calling Hylla, and it was nearing six o'clock already.  
"I just meant that I don't think we're going to be very successful in searching for them. Time wants a fight, and I think we need to give it to him."  
"There is no way in hell that I can convince the senate to launch themselves into another war. Especially one which poses no real threat to them." I pointed out.  
"Time wants to destroy the Gods! What about that has nothing to do with them?" He argued, his face turning stony. Percy had experienced first hand how petulant and selfish the senate could be. His time here was short, and his time as a praetor even shorter. But he'd experienced it. But we were so different to how his camp worked. They held meetings at a round table in a manor house. We held ours in the senate house, a literal replica of how a Roman senate worked. Basically, we were uptight and they were relaxed. Our way suited us, their way suited them. Simple as. But it didn't stop us arguing over the best way to run our camps.  
"They'll argue that it has nothing to do with the Roman Gods. Time comes from a Greek God, therefore it's a Greek problem. Not a Roman one." I explained, trying not to turn red with how ridiculous it was.  
"But that's ridiculous!" He exclaimed, the anger on his face growing more and more apparent with every second. "We have no idea if the destruction of the Greek Gods would mean the Roman Gods would survive? It's uncharted territory! There are no myths about that."  
"I know Percy but it's just-"  
"And even if the Roman Gods did survive once the Greek Gods were all destroyed, don't you think he'd come for the Roman Gods too?"  
"Percy I know that but-"  
"Time wants complete control, complete rule over mortals. Thalia if we don't all come together there won't-"  
"PERCY JACKSON!" I shouted at the fast moving image of him. His hands flying everywhere as he angrily rambled at me. "Shut up and listen to me! _I know that_. But the senate will argue anything to avoid another war, that's just how it is." And despite the fact that I had just roared at him through an Iris message to shut him up, a sly grin grew on his face.

"Well, who said anything about involving the senate?" He suggested, his eyes shining at the prospect of some trouble making. I know that everyone's first impression of Percy was that he looked like someone who would always be up to no good. The bad boy black hair and matching smirk failed to make an impression on no one. But the truth was, Percy didn't mind a bit of trouble every now and then, especially if it meant rejecting an authority he didn't agree with. For example, the senate.  
"Percy no."  
"Think about it Reyna. You just need half of the camp to agree with you to overrule the senate."  
"So I should go behind their back campaigning? Definitely not!"  
"Reyna, the senate's either with us or against us! We don't know how much time we have, but I'm presuming it's not a lot. And _I will not_ let Time win."  
"Neither will I. There are people I love too who are missing Percy. Remember that." I argued, my voice raising to a stern level as I grew more and more frustrated. "I'm not saying that there will be no help from us. I'm just saying that it will take longer to drum the help up."  
"Fine." He spat, his face red and his eyes stormy. I could see that he didn't agree with how I was thinking at all, but there was no changing my mind. I would help him, but I would do it with the senate's permission and completely legally. "But don't forget that Frank's missing too. You don't want to lose _another_ praetor, do you?"

And with that he slashed his hand through the image, and the view of his face disappeared. I sighed and leant back into my chair tiredly.  
"Fuck." I mumbled, throwing my hands up in exasperation, thanking the Gods that there were no demigods around me to see me distressed. The praetor part was a harsh blow for Percy, one I hadn't thought him capable of really. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and I could forgive him for this one. Sighing again, I sat up and prepared myself to call my sister. It was going to be a long night.

Percy POV

"Fine. But don't forget that Frank's missing too. You don't want to lose another praetor, do you?"

The moment the words left my mouth I regretted them, but it was too late, my hand was already slicing through the Iris message, and the image of Reyna shattered. I groaned, flopping back on to my bed and covering my face with my hands. Briefly, I considered Iris messaging her again and apologising, but I knew that it wouldn't be worth it. Reyna was the most level-headed and strong person I knew, though she doubted her capabilities sometimes, and if anyone was able to ignore my frustration-fuelled spats, it would be Reyna.

So, we were no closer to finding the missing demigods it seemed, unless Annabeth and Grover had performed a miracle in the Athenian library and discovered something that could help us. After coming back from camp, I'd gone back to mine and Annabeth's shared room to take a shower and change before going to find Annabeth, though Juniper had decided to just go straight ahead. I'd ended up calling Reyna though, in my deluded hopes that she would have gotten further than I had.

Sighing, I got up and made my way to the library, shuddering as I walked up the grand white marble steps that led to the entrance. It was one of the most beautiful buildings in Olympus, and the first building that Annabeth had designed. The day that it had been opened was six months after the war with Gaia was over, because the moment that Camp Half-Blood had been up and running again Annabeth had locked herself away in her cabin, spending hours designing several buildings for Olympus. They'd basically all needed to be rebuilt after Kronos had trashed the city, but her mother's library was by far the most beautiful and intricate building Annabeth had designed. With large marble steps leading up to it, the library itself was a mixture of stone and glass, and shaped like a large dome. The glass let in sunlight, causing natural beams of light to dot the inside, like personal spotlights. The bookcases wrapped the walls, with tall old fashioned ladders that ran along rails on each section, allowing even the most high up of books to be reached. There was another spiral of bookcases in the centre of the room, from the outside looking like a circle, but once you went in it was more like a maze. Normally, you would find several minor Gods and dryads and other creatures catching up on some research, or doing some light reading on long wooden tables. Annabeth claimed that the tables were what she imagined a library in an English university, like Oxford and Cambridge, would have, and so they immediately became a favourite of hers. There were even lamps in rows down the centre of each table, in case anyone decided to stay into the night. Something Annabeth unknowingly ended up doing a lot.

When I entered the library though, there was no sight of Annabeth, Grover or Juniper. And it took me a whole ten minutes of searching the tables and the intricate maze of bookcases in the centre of the room before I found them, as well as to my delight, Athena. Fortunately, she had shrunk herself down to a normal size today, and although I still found her more intimidating than the minotaur, it helped that she wasn't a giant towering over me. They were all peering over Annabeth's shoulders, reading the same book with looks of satisfied apprehension on their faces.  
"Find anything?" I called out as I approached them, causing Athena to look up at me with a look of frustration on her face.  
"Has my daughter taught you nothing Perseus Jackson? Libraries are a place of quiet and study, not mischief and shouting." She hissed to me, her face the complete opposite of Annabeth's, who looked up at me with a twinkle in her eyes.  
"Sorry." I mumbled, though I doubt my face showed it that much. Annabeth beckoned me over, pointing to a page they'd found in some book. Fortunately, it was written in Greek, and I could therefore read it better than if it had been in English. I took one look at the title at the top of the page and frowned at Annabeth, making a quick eye movement towards her mother. Hadn't we agreed not to tell the Gods about this yet?  
"I had to, we were getting nowhere this morning, and if anyone was going to be able to help us find something in here, it was my mother." She explained in hushed tones. I shrugged in acknowledgement, knowing that Annabeth would never do something if she thought it wouldn't help us. Athena glared at me, causing Annabeth to roll her eyes and shift herself so her back was towards her mum, giving her some time to explain the page to me.  
"According to this book, Time was created before Chronos was. Though because at the time there were no mortals, or any other beings or that matter, there was no need for it. So Chronos took control of time, then created Kronos and gave him the powers to use Time, though Chronos himself still stayed in control of Time. He had literally split Time by giving Kronos a part of it, therefore Time was less powerful in itself and could never rise up and defeat it's masters. So then Chronos disappears, and no one hears from him ever again." Annabeth explained, the gleam in her eyes growing stronger with every second.  
"Okay…" I started, not really guessing where this was going. Annabeth grinned at me, almost too delighted at the tone of this conversation.  
"So, when we destroyed Kronos, we healed Time. The two split parts of it came back together, and it was suddenly more powerful than it had had ever been." She revealed. I could see where this was going, and she obviously noticed the realisation on my face, because her grin grew into a smirk, and the book in her hands closed.  
"Time could then overpower Chronos and kill him, becoming his own being." I murmured, finishing the story for her. "So this is technically our fault, as we killed Kronos?" She shrugged nonchalantly.  
"I mean, we had a pretty good reason for killing Kronos. What's happening now, this is just like a really late aftershock of Kronos' death." She pointed out, easing my worries slightly.  
"But this gives us no idea into how we can defeat Time." I sighed, leaning back against a bookcase tiredly. Annabeth's face grew still, and her hands ran up and down the books spine nervously. I raised an eyebrow at her.  
"What?" I mumbled. "I know that face, you've got an idea."  
"I have." She confirmed, nodding, though her eyes didn't meet mine. "But you're not gonna like it."  
"I rarely like any ideas that involve having to fight in a war." I mumbled, causing her to smile with amusement. My heart beat a little faster just looking at her, and I saw her prepare herself to start talking.  
"Well, I think it's pretty obvious, that even if we manage to find the rest of the demigods, and somehow manage to unite the Greeks and the Romans together to fight Time, that we're never going to be powerful enough to defeat him." She began, clutching the book tight enough to snap it.I tapped her hands gently, causing her to loosen her grip around it thankfully.  
"So we need to find someone stronger than us to fight him." I finished, nodding. "Makes sense."  
"But, it would need to be someone who has a good knowledge of how Time works, how we can fight it." She went on, her eyes refusing to meet mine again. I frowned.  
"But Time's basically been dormant since the beginning of Time, and it's two masters are both dead. So there's no one who will know how to fight it." I countered, watching as she bit her lip worriedly. She shrugged as if I'd just said her answer.  
"You can't mean…" I breathed, my eyes widening in disbelief. Finally she looked up and her stormy grey eyes bore into mine.  
"Percy, I think we need to bring Kronos back from the dead."

* * *

 **Happy New Year everyone!  
Hope you enjoyed this chapter, I really liked writing the insight from Reyna's POV of this situation. And I realise this sort of ends on a cliffhanger, but I couldn't resist.  
Remember to review!**


	14. Chapter 12

**Long time no post - and I can't guarantee any consistency in chapters any time soon...but here's the next one anyway!**

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Piper POV

I would later claim to my boyfriend that I'd gotten plenty of rest that night, as many of the half-bloods who'd spent the night pretending to sleep would do, so that their siblings and friends would stop, or at least, pause worrying about them. Of course, these were all lies, and blatant ones, but there was really nothing else I could do to stop Jason from frowning at me, his eyebrows meeting in the middle as he turned his attention towards me rather than our imprisonment.

Fed up with racking my brains over who could have done this to them, whether or not the Gods were searching for them, if Percy and Annabeth were alright, and a million other questions that my brothers and sisters seemed to spout as if they were a fountain, I decided to focus on something else instead. Of course, this ended up being how damned hungry I was. No one had had anything to eat since they'd been placed in here, which was roughly forty hours ago, and we were all beginning to feel the effects. The pit of emptiness in my stomach, which oddly felt as though there was a rock weighted at the bottom of it, had only grown overnight. Few demigods wore watches, as they were a nuisance when training, however there were currently about ten people wearing them, one of them being Jason thankfully. So I was delighted to be able to watch the hours tick by, counting how long it had been since I'd pretended to go to sleep, waking up exactly ten hours later. It was seven am by this point, our second morning in whatever this room was, and I would have given my right arm and leg for a camp Half-Blood breakfast.

Fortunately, seconds later my wish was granted, and next to the water fountain that had appeared in the middle of the room the night before, (after everyone had become dehydrated, much to Will's worry) appeared a buffet table of breakfast foods. Of course this immediately meant chaos as everyone scrambled desperately to get their fill. It ended up being Hazel and Frank, our calming and organised leaders from Camp Jupiter who ended up managing to get everyone away, dividing up the food so that there was enough for everyone to have a plate full, and there still be leftovers for later (in case no more food appeared). Admittedly, us Greeks could do with taking a few pointers from our Roman friends, organisation has never been one of our skills, though the Romans seem to have it down to a T.

I ate my share of food, bringing a plate to Jason first to make sure that he too ate (rather than spending his evening worrying about everyone else).  
"Well, this definitely wasn't how I'd had today planned." Jason sighed as he picked at a chicken wing on his paper plate.  
"Really? I definitely planned on spending my day locked in a doorless room with over a hundred teenagers fighting over a buffet table of rapidly depleting food." I countered, trying to invoke the smile from Jason which I loved so much. He managed to grant me a small chuckle, but his smile was weak enough for me to sense that something was wrong (other than us being hopelessly trapped by a nameless enemy). "You look like you've been beaten in a swordfight by a eleven year old. What's the matter?" I asked, forgoing all tenderness. He sighed, running a hand through his hair, it being long enough now that he could do that and it would actually make a difference.  
"We were going to go on a road trip." He explained briefly, which admittedly just left me more confused than I had been before.  
"Who was?" I asked, trying to keep my cool at his frustratingly short sentence.  
"Me and you, I-"  
"You and I." I corrected, then wincing at how harsh it had sounded. "Sorry force of habit from teaching the younger ones. Carry on." Somehow my grammar policing had invoked a bemused smile on Jason's face, and he continued with a look of pride.  
"It was only going to be for a couple of days, just down to the Virginia beaches. Chiron thought that for Percy and Annabeth coming back, it might be best if they didn't have to be smothered by everyone, so we were going to stay for a couple of days with them, then disappear for a bit. Seeing how good being away from Camp was for them….I dunno I thought that maybe it was our turn to get away. I had a car booked for us, and we were going to stay in a little bungalow next to the beach, and you could teach me how to surf." He paused, focusing on my shocked face. "What, bad idea?"

Admittedly, I probably overreacted a bit, but I couldn't remember the last holiday that I'd gotten which wasn't a guilt gift from my Dad or a trip to Camp Jupiter. And after everything we'd been through, a holiday with my adorable boyfriend was really just a dream come true. So I ignored the scraps of food which were left on my plate, and leaned up to wrap my arms around his neck in a very tight hug, letting my plate spill on to the floor. He caught me with a huff, but tightened his arms around my back anyway, letting his own plate and the remaining food fall on to the floor, to the surprise of the demigods who had been near us at the time.  
"Good idea then?" He chuckled into my ear, to which I responded by simply nuzzling my face into the crook of his shoulder, unable to form any suitable words. "One day Pipes," He sighed, his arms tightening even more around my waist. "One day we'll go somewhere and it will be just you and me on a beach or in some city in Europe. We'll wake up late and have brunch in a cafe, no monsters or training or to get in the way of us being lazy."  
"I'm not sure you can manage lazy." I snorted, remembering fondly that my Roman bred boyfriend still got up at 5am each morning to go for a run.  
"I'll learn for you." He murmured as we pulled away from the hug, his hands intertwining with mine.  
"You say the most romantic things sometimes." I teased, squeezing his hands gratefully. He was silent for a minute, his face shallowing as a more serious thought seemed to take over.  
"We're gonna survive this one right?" He murmured, his eyebrows furrowing while he refused to meet my eyes. I let one hand reach up to his face, sweeping a piece of golden hair off of his forehead before letting my palm rest against his cheek briefly. Jason had had to be so strong at such a young age, a praetor and the son of the King of the Gods. He was born into a position of power, and that meant that he'd been the one people looked to when they were at their weakest. After the war with Gaia, he'd finally been allowed to show some weakness, to admit that he was afraid of dying and letting people down or never being as strong as everyone expected him to be. It had taken me physically forcing him to admit that he didn't have to be everyone's pillar for him to realise it.

" _Sit." I practically growled, pushing Jason on to the sofa in the Zeus cabin and locking the door behind us. I turned to face and crossed my arms in an attempt to keep myself from losing my already weakening control.  
_ " _Pipes? What's going on?" My boyfriend asked, looking at my rigid stance in confusion. "I've got to teach a sword fighting class in a couple of minutes."  
_ " _Jason, when was the last time you weren't teaching a class or training?" I asked, my voice grave in it's tone. He frowned, a dimple appearing as his mouth curved, and I saw his hands clench slightly as he struggled to find the answer.  
_ " _What's this about Piper?" He asked, his voice matching mine as we stared each other out. I could tell that he'd already guessed where this was going, but I wasn't going to give in that easily.  
_ " _Fine. If you can't work it out I'll tell you." I announced, ignoring his question. "You haven't. You haven't stopped to rest, you've barely been eating. In fact I can't even remember a meal where you spent more than ten minutes sitting at the table." he shrugged, trying to play his absence off nonchalantly.  
_ " _I've been busy, there's still a lot of clearing up to do after the battle, and cabins to rebuild and new demigods to settle in. It's kind of been nonstop."  
_ " _Yeah for the first couple of weeks it was, but the cabins are practically all rebuilt; not to mention that you've got nothing to do with that anyway because the Hephaestus cabin are the ones who actually know how to build a house, not you." I countered, uncrossing my arms and taking a step towards him, my anger beginning to dissipate as his helplessness seeped into the room. "There have only been a couple of new demigods since the war, because the satyrs aren't ready to go out looking yet. And - it's been two months Jason." The last part was said softly, it taking a lot of effort out of me to admit the truth to him. He closed his eyes for a second, and when he reopened them there was something new in them, a look which resembled fear more than reluctance. "Talk to me Jason," I begged, sitting next to him on the small leather sofa and taking his hand in mine.  
_ " _There's nothing to say." He said, swallowing (a tell of his whenever he lied) and slowly removed his hand from mine.  
_ " _Really? Because it seems like at the moment you are involved with_ everything _in the camp, and yet you spend so little time with anyone?" Once again he swallowed, this time standing up and pacing over to the other side of the room so as to avoid me looking at him. He had his back to me, yet I could picture in my head what his face looked like. His eyebrows scrunched together as he tried to come up with some lie which would deter my questioning, his mouth screwed up in a way which made the little scar prominent while he chewed on the inside of his cheek. We'd all lost weight during the war, too much fighting and not enough food. The majority of us had gained it back, with the exception of a few. Jason being one of them. His cheekbones were still a bit too prominent for my liking, different to the hardened but fuller teenager I'd managed to convince to come up on to the roof with me back when we were a part of the Wilderness School._

" _It's not a big deal Piper." He tried to reason, his voice rising in intensity though his back was still turned to me. "I'm just trying to help to rebuild the camp."  
_ " _Fine, if you won't admit it, then I will." I'd lost all my patience for him now. I loved Jason, but he could be stubborn beyond belief sometimes, especially in the moments where you needed him to show some amenability. "I'm worried about you Jason. The war has been over for two months and everyone else has begun to move on. And I know that we went through it harder than most did, but how you're acting at the moment….it's like you believe that the war's still going on."_

 _He was silent for too long, and the only sounds in the room were me and him breathing at an odd pace. Still he didn't turn round.  
_ " _You have no right to say that to me." He murmured, though not in the loving or humoured way I was used to. Instead it was low and gruff, and his voice shook with what I presumed was him closing in on anger.  
_ " _It's called being your girlfriend Jason, look it up." I snarled, my voice dripping with sarcasm as I folded my arms over my chest and grimaced at his back.  
_ " _Just leave it Piper!" He was almost shouting now, the frustration and agitation forcing a break in his voice. "It's none of your business."  
_ " _Alright." I said, my voice cold and shallow as I stood up from the sofa. "When you're ready to admit that you're not okay, come find me."_

 _We didn't speak to each other for a week, and admittedly it wasn't very good fro the camp. Percy was constantly trying to get me to talk to Jason, because apparently since we'd had our argument, he'd been even more committed to doing every single job that needed doing. I refused of course, I loved Jason, but I wasn't going to fight for a lost cause. Once he decided that he wasn't a lost cause, then I'd talk to him._

 _So it wasn't until two weeks after our fight that Jason came up to me during dinner, and in front of all my sisters, asked if we could talk. I obliged of course. It had been a tough couple of weeks for me too, what with a new annoying sibling to look after (this one was really annoying though, no exaggeration), and without my sensible boyfriend to stop me from having a go at the new ones, I was struggling. So off we went. Oddly, he pulled me over to the beach. Jason could swim, but he wasn't the best swimmer (there not being many beaches at Camp Jupiter), and although the beach was my favourite place, as a son of Zeus, he tended to stay away from his Uncles domain. I took my shoes off when we reached the sand, letting my toes dig their own little holes in the soft ground, and swung my shoes in my hands as I followed Jason to wherever it was he was taking me. Eventually we stopped, and he turned to face me, twisting his hands together and looking extremely unsure of himself. I waited for him to speak for a couple of seconds, but when it began to look like he wasn't going to start any time soon, I decided to get the ball rolling.  
_ " _What did you want to say?" I asked softly, keeping my eyes locked on his. I was done with the anger and sarcasm which had fueled our last conversation, I just wanted to make sure he was okay. He bit his lip, the little staple scar disappearing as he tried to come up with something to say.  
_ " _I didn't.." He sighed, running a hand through his hair as he stumbled over his words. "I didn't really realise, until you tried to bring it up, that I wasn't acting normally. I guess I was ignoring it."  
_ " _Ignoring what?" I asked, trying to get him to admit as much of this himself as possible. For a second, his eyes pleaded with me, begging me not to make him say all this out loud; then just as quickly they hardened and his gaze darted to burn into the sand.  
_ " _I guess- I guess going from a war to normal life...it's not something that I can do very well?" He attempted. Admittedly now, he wasn't very far off from it there. But I wasn't taking that as an answer, it just didn't explain enough.  
_ " _Jason we all went through the same thing." I tried to reason, keeping my voice soft and caring so as to show that this wasn't a hostile badgering. "And I know that different people deal with things in different ways; but this feels like more than just that."  
_ " _Pipes I'm fine." He said, attempting to qualm my worries. "I've just had a rough time finding my footing now that the war's over." It was kind of insulting really, that he thought I knew him so little that I wouldn't be able to see through his feeble lies. He flashed a smile, trying to charm me now. Again, a futile attempt, because I knew that this was the type of smile which he gave to those whom he was trying to deceive. Jason had learned pretty early on, that he had the type of face which people trusted. Kind of the opposite to Percy: while Jason was the rule abiding golden boy; Percy was the troublemaker with a crooked smile which made shop owners keep a close eye on him. Of course, I'd known this boy too long now, I knew him inside out. He wasn't sneaking past me that easily.  
_ " _You're hiding something." I sighed, my voice beginning to lose it's soft touch now. Jason hiding what was wrong was one thing, him lying about it blatantly - that pissed me off more than it should have. He swallowed and quickly turned his back on me - it was like that other night all over again. I briefly considered walking away again, giving him more time to process everything. However I wasn't sure that more alone time was what he needed, and so I persevered. "Jason just tell me what's going on, maybe I can help."  
_ " _You won't understand." He had been silent for a minute, as if he couldn't understand what I was asking him to do. And when he finally spoke, his murmur was so quiet I almost didn't hear it, and his voice shook like a scared child's.  
_ " _Try me." I begged, my voice rising in what I had hoped would sound reassuring and strong. Instead it came out threatening and annoyed, so I retracted the step I had been about to take towards him and stayed in my place. After another minute of silence, where he apparently refused to try and explain what was going on with him, I attempted to move closer to him. Maybe put a hand on his shoulder, try and take his hand; I hadn't thought that far ahead really, I just wanted to show him some sort of reassurance. Except he heard my steps, and whipped round, stumbling back a few steps away from me. That hurt more than him staying silent.  
_ " _Jason….." I whispered, my hand unintentionally reaching out to him as I breathed my feelings.  
_ " _You won't understand." He repeated, shaking his head at me.  
_ " _Just try and explain it." I pleaded, my eyes were beginning to water now as I watched him push away from me. Behind him the sun was setting in a blaze of fiery colours over the still water, reflecting a foreboding yet beautiful blood red into the air and in ripples on the ocean. For the first time in a while his eyes met mine, sky blue bouncing off brown; and I finally knew the anguish and fear he was experiencing. It wasn't something a teenager at the end of a war should have been feeling, and it was not something that I could walk away from now. "Please Jason, I can't watch you do this any longer."  
_ " _And you think I'm enjoying this?" He'd cracked now, and the clouds above us began to gather in a heap, their deep grey forming a gap in the eternal red which had previously been spread over the sky. His voice was crackling with uncertainty and fear of himself. "You think this how I want to live my life? I am sixteen Piper! I don't deserve this." I'd never seen Jason let so much of what he was feeling out at once, and honestly it frightened me a bit, to see my normally stable and reliable boyfriend shaken.  
_ " _Then let me help!" My voice rose with his, and I took a step towards him. We were only a couple of feet apart now, and I could see that he desperately just wanted to let himself go; but truthfully I don't think that he knew how until I pushed him just over the edge.  
_ " _You think I don't want some help?" He mocked, the clouds above him growing darker and darker. I knew in a few minutes some alarmed demigods would come running round the corner to make sure that Jason hadn't lost control and hurt me unintentionally. Or worse, this storm cloud looming above us really was on purpose. I'd never seen Jason become this enfraged at another person before, let alone me. Of course we'd fought before, but only out of frustration, not out of a hateful fury.  
_ " _THEN TELL ME WHY I CAN'T HELP?"  
_ " _BECAUSE I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING!" I'd finally broke in irritation; and he shattered alongside me, shards of emotions flying along the beach as the wind ripped around us. Still his roars carried above the sound of the gale, and I could do nothing but listen to him pour everything out. The look of pure helplessness on his face, in the hunch of his shoulders and the clench of his fists made me instantly regret shouting at him. But in hindsight, it was exactly what he needed. "We just spent the past two years fighting and preparing for a war which we won; and there were casualties and losses but we got through it….and now we're just- just meant to return to life like it's all okay? Like everything hasn't changed?"_

 _He shook his head as if he couldn't quite comprehend that we were still living a life. He dropped to the ground with a sigh, pulling his knees up near his chest and staring out at the ocean, rubbing the sand idly between his fingers as he watched the gentle waves lap up the dry sand. I didn't sit next to him, not wanting to crowd him. But I looked up and the sky was nearing a navy now, the sun having set and the bright oranges gone until the next morning. At least this meant that Percy and Annabeth weren't going to come running over expecting to find me dead in the sand; Jason's rage seemed to be over, and the storm clouds he'd unintentionally formed were gone. "I don't know who I am anymore. This time two years ago I was at my peak, I defeated Krios in the first war, already had a number of successful missions under my belt, then was named praetor. And the just like that-" He clicked his fingers, and laughed at the ease of it. Now I sat down next to him, crossing my legs and leaning my arms back in the sand. "I was gone, waking up on a school trip with you and Leo, not knowing a single thing about myself. So I learnt who I was again, earnt the Greeks trust alongside you, and became one of their leaders. Then we went back to Camp Jupiter, and Percy handed my Praetorship back to me. I was a leader of two camps, and yet neither of them felt like home. Then when we were at the Doors of Death, and I had to pass the praetorship on to Frank. I don't regret it; I know lots of people think I do." He sneaked a glance at me, before focusing quickly back on the sand. I stayed silent. "I was no longer Roman enough to use the power of being Praetor to its full potential, and if I hadn't given it to Frank we would all be dead right now. But…..I dunno it was one of the only pieces of being Roman I had left, and one part of my identity I never really considered having to lose."_

 _He paused, his gaze finally meeting mine. I think we shared more in that moment than we ever had before, or since. All the heartache, everything we'd lost, everything we'd gained, all the things that words couldn't explain. It was all there. It was only now that I noticed that he'd been crying, and my whole body ached with a want to let him just lay his head on my shoulder and cry. But my common sense knew better than that. If he didn't get all of these things out now, he never would.  
_ " _I'm so used to being a leader, in all honesty, the majority of what I can remember from Camp Jupiter are the moments where I was fulfilling my role as praetor during the wars, the times where I purely existed just to protect and take charge of others. And now…." A few more tears fell from his face, and now I let myself shift closer to him, just enough so that our legs were touching. "Well now I'm just another demigod. I've never had to be that before."_

 _We sat in silence for another few minutes, both just staring out to sea as the world around us darkened. If we were out here much longer, they would send out a search party for us.  
_ " _Sometimes," I whispered, not wanting to interrupt his thoughts, but my body was begging me to comfort him in some way. "transitioning from being in a position of power to feeling like you have so little; is just as hard as going from being at the bottom of the pile to being in charge of anyone."  
_ " _Piper...I have no idea who I am anymore. Greek, Roman, a praetor, a soldier, a brother?" He shook his head, and finally his shoulders began to shake as the sobs took hold of him. I gave in to my instincts as a girlfriend now, and wrapped an arm round him, pulling him against me and letting him cry it out.  
_ " _I know exactly who you are." I murmured against his head once his sobs had begun to subside. "You are Jason Grace, someone who is loved by so many for being selfless, for always abiding by the rules - no matter what, for keeping a strong head in situations which make others lose their head, for having a habit of getting hit in the head and then going unconscious-" I am proud to say that he laughed at that one. "for being the cool side to Leo's sometimes too crazy side, for being Percy's 'bro', for being Annabeth's partner in crime when it comes to battlefield plans, for being Franks mentor, for being Hazel's role model, for being Nico's confidant. Fuck the titles Jason. Greek, Roman, Praetor, brother, boyfriend - they don't matter compared to the person that we know you are." He had sat up now, keeping one arm wrapped around me while continuing to stare at the ocean.  
_ " _And what about you? Who am I to you?" He asked genuinely, curiosity in his eyes searching out the answers.  
_ " _You are the boy who I - much to the shame of my siblings - chased for months at the Wilderness Academy; the boy who was nearly too scared of breaking the rules to climb on to the roof top with me; but then shamelessly snogged me once I managed to get you to. You are the boy who stupidly didn't tell us when it was your birthday, because you didn't want any of the focus taken off of the quest. You are the boy who trusted me to be able to protect myself in every battle; you are the boy who taught me to have confidence in myself and who I am; you are the boy who I fell in love with."_

 _There were very few words he could have said after that which would have been adequate; so instead he settled for just pulling me into his side, and resting his head atop mine. I sighed and leaned into his embrace, revelling in the warmth of him. I knew that this wasn't the end of it, but it was the start of the healing._

" _Look, I'm not expecting you to be magically okay after this." I began to say softly after we'd sat in silence for a few minutes. "But I hope that you now at least know that there are so many people here whose lives you are a part of. If you can't figure out who you are alone, then just look at the difference you've made in everyone else's lives - and that should make a start."_

"A few months from now," I murmured, nudging myself closer to him so he could hear me. "we will be eating croissants in a cafe in Paris, or lying on the beach, or walking through Barcelona or London or any other place in the world except for New York. Just you and me doing whatever it is we want to do."  
"So we'll be in Elysium then?" He suggested, cracking the jokester smile which he rarely used - it was my favourite smile. I elbowed him in the arm, my own smile dominating my face as I laughed with him.  
"As long as we're together Jason, I don't care where we are." I announced, throwing my arms around his neck and pressing a kiss to his cheek. After a second of pure adoring smiles between us, I retracted my arms. "Actually I take that back - I'd rather be alive." He grinned and pulled me against him, kissing me in a maneuver which I hadn't been expecting. I might have let out a noise of surprise, but wasn't going to let this moment slip away from us. He pulled away after what I would call a pretty chaste kiss (compared to what we could normally achieve), and smiled down at me with a humorous glint in his eyes,  
"That's my girl." I punched him in the arm again.

* * *

 **I know that there wasn't really any action in it, but this ones been stuck in my head for a while so it needed to be written.**


End file.
